The Rheumatoid Factor: Hands

I've cheated by posting this on Monday, then changing the post day for my poem to Tuesday because, while I'm striving towards the acceptance I mention in this blog, I still haven't achieved enough of it to be comfortable having these pictures at the top of the page.

These are my hands, my thirty-nine year old hands. They are the part of my body about which I am the most self-conscious, the most uncomfortable. I think I'm even more uncomfortable about my hands than I am my cellulite-covered thighs. I've earned the thighs. I didn't earn this.

I need to make peace with my body, a body that has betrayed me, a body that has let me down. You would think that after 20+ years I would have "accepted" the fact that I have arthritis, but that's not the case. Now I need to apply a lesson I've learned in other aspects of my life: acceptance does not equal approval. Posting these pictures, treating myself to acrylic nails (did you notice those gorgeous nails, by the way???) are small steps towards accepting that this is my life, this is part of me. Yet, while I accept it, I can still say it unequivocally sucks.

I imagine that women feel the way I'm feeling right now when they take "before" diet photos: exposed and ugly. And these are my "after" photos!

So...here are my hands. Aesthetically, they flop. Yet, these hands have held my crying babies, have tied thousands of shoes and have wrapped their share of presents. These hands have planted flowers in the spring, chopped vegetables for countless meals and have, yes, spanked a few bottoms. They once played the piano, now they tap the computer keys for creative outlet. You don't want to know how many butts they've wiped (notice how I separated that sentence from the vegetable-preparation sentence).

I anticipate that my struggle to accept will continue for the rest of my life. Most of us have that part of ourselves that isn't wrong, it's just not, well, pretty. Maybe it was physically damaged in an accident or maybe it's more of a difficult personality trait. Whatever it is, sometimes it helps to take a big photograph of it, look closely and finally decide...OK.

For today, it really is OK.