Hands.
I have ugly hands. They’re not deformed, or structurally unsound in any way. I’ve got long fingers, and short fingernails, as I’m always biting them off. But I hate them. I hate my hands.
I guess it started when I was 8. I was learning violin, and my teacher told me I had bad fingers. I understand now that he meant bad fingers in respect to playing the violin, but I took it as a general statement. I would lie awake and wonder what was so bad about them. What had my hands ever done to me?
I know what they do now, I know what I can do, and I know what I can do with them. It’s my hands I blame when I’m sick of myself, and my vulnerability. “It’s my hands that made me cut,” I still tell myself. Bad hands. Ugly hands. Bad hands. “It’s all their fault. They drew the blade, they slit the skin. Bad hands.”
Bad, bad hands. I suppose it goes for most addictions. Bad hands, making me drink. Drawing that bottle to my lips. Bad hands, making me smoke. Inhaling, and holding in. Bad, bad hands.
My hands got a piece of redemption two years ago. I’m a dancer- ballet, going on 15 years- and my company put on a recital. After it was over, I came down off the stage and this woman and her daughter stopped me. They told me I had the most beautiful hands they had ever seen; “so beautiful, so expressive, so alive,” the mother kept repeating.
My hands are a case study in irony. The ultimate irony, that that which you find ugly, is beautiful.
