The Birth of Mars

I was born bleeding.

They ripped me from my mother’s womb, a rare hemorrhage in my nose and ears, it covered me.

They tell me that this is why I am the only one in my family with red hair.

I got sunburned for the first time when I turned four.

This is when the red freckles appeared, coloring my skin as if I was diseased.

They tested me for melanoma.

The doctors told my mother it was rare pigmentation.

That I would be fine.

I started running track when I was nine.

I was often so anxiety ridden, I couldn’t feel my fingers or feet for hours on end.

I could not eat, I could not sleep, no matter how close or far away my race was.

I placed my feet on the red track, and I was told,

“Red means run.”

So I ran. Fast.

The anger hit me when I turned eleven.

I would grow hot, combusting out of my own sweat and skin.

Throwing things. Hitting things. Hurting myself until my knuckles ran red.

I knew this was not normal. It was my normal.

They hit me on the day I turned fifteen.

I ran to the bathroom, blood splattering on the tile floors of the empty school hallway.

In the mirror, I saw almost nothing.

My eyes were glossed. I could only make out a blob of red until the euphoria of protective adrenaline was over.

I saw myself, drenched in blood. My red sweatshirt and copper hair almost blending in with the scarlet iron-paint on my face and trembling hands.

I developed a bleeding disorder triggered by running a month after my sixteenth birthday.

Running in the woods with my cross country team, I collapsed.

Blood pooled beneath me, coming from my nose, mouth, and ears.

My best friend carried me two miles up hill, his light grey shirt splattered and drenched with red.

It read, “The war is over, it is up to you.”

Mine was just beginning.

They gave me a nickname a week into my junior year.

“Your hair is red. You have a bleeding disorder. Your freckles are red. You win on every red track. You are the red planet. You are mars.”

And that is what they screamed when I led races and held trophies in my grasp.

I gave CPR a week after I turned seventeen.

His eyes rolled back, his face white and blue, the only color on his lips was the blood that bursted from asphyxia.

I remember pushing; pushing.

That, and the blood I pressed my lips into is about all I remember.

I ran my last high school race the day I turned eighteen.

I bled, per usual.

My teammates screamed at me like every race, cheering my name as I led the front of the pack.

Everyone else stared. Gaped. Gasped.

I was winning.

I knew this was not normal, this was my normal.