Posts tagged my arm

I missed you for the first time today. I thought I did. Then I realized that I couldn’t have. I missed you all of those times before when you were supposed to be here and you weren’t; the times I called and wrote and got no answer. But no, truly, I didn’t miss you even then. I couldn’t have. To miss you I’d have to care.

I missed arms. I missed comfort. I missed someone holding me despite the pain. I missed the idea of solace, the soothing balm of someone’s concern for my pain above all else. It was never you I longed for. You are undeserving of even being thought a specific provider of those those things. You’d had to have shown me something like love first. You didn’t.

Even now when I wake up in the night in jagged pain and reach confused across the tops of my sheets for someone close, I am not reaching for you. I am reaching for the idea of a man you could never be. I am reaching with fingers that cannot feel, cannot touch, and cannot hold. If someone were there I wouldn’t know it anyway. It is no change from when you were my lover.

My nerves will heal. My fingers will clench again. I will reach out every night until they do. No, not for you—or a mythical man that will never be—but for the sheer joy of that luscious pain. Every time my tendons strain, my nerves sizzle, my skin tingles or my arteries twinge I will know that I am getting stronger. It will be my arm, frail now but not always, that will hold me at night. Oh I’ll share my bed again. I’ll feel skin with my reborn fingertips. My spine will strain and my hips churn. I’ll fuck for fun and smile in the heat of sweat-rank close proximity.

But I will need no arm for my solace save for the one that waves goodbye.

“Now you realize how much you took it for granted.”

My cousin said this to me as he helped me place my clean clothes on hangers and into my closet. I was making very little headway on my own, as my left hand still only has about 10% of its functionality due to my damaged tendons and nerves. I stopped haphazardly affixing a pair of pants to a plastic hanger and looked at him. For someone as young as he is, he’s incredibly good at being practical and compartmentalizing his emotions. Normally I enjoy his viewpoint on things. He is level-headed and cool where I am passionate and heated. We compliment each other in most situations. Not this one.

“Took what for granted?”

“Your hand”

“I didn’t. You cannot take a hand for granted.”

He laughed.”Yes you can.”

“No. You can’t.” And I explained.

A hand is not a privilege. It is not some gift that I was given and then squandered. It’s not a gadget, perk, talent, acquisition or mutation. It is an intrinsic part of my being that I have learned to use and depend on since the very day I was born. It is mine. An argument that could be made is that some people are born without hands, or arms, or legs, etc. Should I not feel guilt that I am bitching about losing the use of my hand when some people lose—or never have—so much more? That argument is absurd and steeped in self-hate and indoctrinated religiously influenced guilt. I do not believe in God, and therefor do not take to this idea that I was created and must treat my body like some sort of artifact on loan from heaven; constantly thankful for my ten fingers and constantly guilty for even thinking of being upset should something fail to work just right. “Oh no, I shouldn’t complain. Remember that one lady born with only a right leg?” Fuck that. I owe nothing, not to anyone, for my opinions about my own body. I could use my hand a month ago with enough skill to control the tip of bullwhip into an insect. I could cast a fishing line a hundred feet. I could catch a frisbee. I could paint my nails. I could type a note. I could wave hello. I could touch someone and feel it. Now only my pinky feels anything other than numbness and vague, sharp pain. I am allowed to be upset. I am allowed this without some lesson having to be learned. One’s body is his or her own. Is it selfish to want something missing to return? And if it is, is it really wrong? No, it isn’t, and being made to feel humbled by my experience is insulting.

So no, my rage at not being able to use my hand is notbecause I took it for granted. It is because I was stupid, and one act of stupidity has rendered me less functional than I was, and I may very well never be back to the way I was before. I am going to have to relearn how to do every single task that involved my hand.

And all that rage does is make me want to work even harder, if not to regain use of my self-destroyed apparatus, then to function just as well without it.

If one more person tries to stick an IV in me I’m going to flip a shit.

For all the times you called me yours. For all the times you said “nibbles” in that stupidly cute tone of voice as you bit me on my shoulder. For all the times we went to the movies. For all the times I defended you when my friends said you were a jerk. For all the times my mother said you were no good and I said she was wrong. For that time I bottomed for you even though it really hurt and I have issues with it. For that time I slashed my arm open and you kept pressure on it while the paramedics arrived. For that time you sat with me in the hospital while I almost died and you said that you loved me.

For all of that, and for saying “I guess I’m too busy for a boyfriend,” I hope you experience everything that I just mentioned…

And I hope you have it forcibly ripped away.

In the words of the great Pam Grier:

“Death is too easy for you, bitch! I want you to suffer.”

I’m actually a bit nervous about getting my cast off and sutures out today. I’m not scared of the pain, I’m worried about the scar. It’s been under some sort of cast for almost a month, and I’ve only had to look at it once. I’m not ready for it to be out for everyone to see, and I’m not ready to have to make up some elaborate lie as to why I have it. Also it’s been somewhat easy to ignore how badly I’m damaged. It’s been just shy of a month, and I still can’t use my hand. Without the cast I’m going to have to face the fact my hand may never work right again.

If it were winter I’d simply wear one of my coats and a long glove on my arm, but since it’s over 100 degrees most days I don’t think I’ll be doing my Rogue impression anytime soon, despite my bi-colored hair.

My friends want me to go out of town with them in a week for birthday party shenanigans and drinking. My mom wants me to come stay with her to “relax and straighten out my priorities.” I haven’t the heart to tell them I just want to hide in my house. I really don’t want to be seen by anyone. I feel broken at best, ugly and branded with a Scarlet Letter-magnitude mark of shame at worst.

And I’m pretty sure my boyfriend is over me. It’s not painful, not like my arm. I just wish he’d say it so I can shift my focus fully over to myself and my recovery, such as it is. Communication isn’t his forte, though.

It’s been 26 days since I quit smoking.

I don’t even feel like me these days. I’m completely lost.