Confessions of a Cutter

When I was 18, I went to another congregation to hear a boy that I liked speak. I don't remember a thing that he said. But I do remember the talk of the woman who spoke that day.

She told the story of her hands. She had always thought that lotion was for wimps. So she didn't take very good care of her hands. She viewed them as tools. Until she became a mother. She said that one night she touched her daughter's sleeping cheek and looked at her rough, cracked hands as she did it. She took better care of her hands after that. She realized that while they were wonderful, useful tools. They were also instruments of love and comfort. And she wanted to be a more gentle comforter.

I have ridiculously large hands for my relatively short stature. They are convenient only for piano playing. (I can palm a basket ball with no problem, but I'm not so good at doing anything else with said ball.)

When I was 12, I learned that I needed to always carry a bandanna with me when I hiked. Not to mop my brow or hold back my hair. Not even to keep out the dust like the cowboys once did. No, I had to carry a bandanna because I was going to end up cutting my hands while hiking. Usually badly. I use cut in the broadest of terms. Think more like slice. If there was a fallen log to climb over, I was bound to find the sharpest stick to grab on to. If there were clay walls to scale, I was going to find the one that had broken glass hidden within. What can I say? It's a gift.

As a result of this nasty habit of mine, I have LOTS of scars on my hands. The one I got from accidentally filleting the skin of my knuckle whilst whittling has finally faded into invisibility, but I always manage to find new ways to scar my hands. Broken glass seems to be magnetically attracted to my fingers.

Yesterday I was standing at the sink unscrewing the lid from a glass bottle. The bottle shattered in my hands as I was twisting. My hand has a lovely deep slice that still bleeds if I move it. There were three thoughts that went through my head when it first happened. The first was...well the first was an impolite word. The second was, "I should call Todd because I'm about to go into shock and there are two little boys right here". The third was, "I will never have pretty hands. I will just have scars."

I didn't call Todd. Dialing the phone was too far beyond my abilities for the first hour. I managed to bandage myself after 30 minutes of trying to stop the bleeding.

When Todd got home last night, he looked at the bandanna holding my bandages on and asked what happened.

My response: "Gang fight. I totally won."