I think I write this post in some variation at least once a year.
Let's see. Yes, but I'm not linking. They're such sweet moments, memories of Jacob and I can't read them right now. If you'd like to just type in 'cracked fingertips' in the search box top left. I can wait.
We've reached that magical time of year when my hands are so badly cracked and bleeding that I have taken to wearing bandages on the tips just to keep people from freaking out. My skin is like touching fine-grit sandpaper and I feel like a giant itch. It doesn't matter what I do, it just happens. I drink a ton of water, I wear rubber gloves when I wash dishes or clean, I wear gloves outside, I use a ton of moisturizer, even straight oil sometimes, hardcore stuff-shea butter, emu oil, you name it. Humidifers and I are close friends.
I think it's just the price for living here in this high-altitude low-humidity windblown wasteland of dryness. I'll live, two months and it will be a memory, I hope. It's a long two months when you're reminded of it every time you touch something, which is 37,000,000,000 times an hour.
Everyone is obsessed with my tiny little ruined hands and I spend all my time hiding them in my pockets or sitting on them, snatching them back from boys determined to inspect or soothe them, fielding questions about their condition and deflecting sympathetic expressions of concern, as if there is something worthy in the plight of this usual seasonal drama to discuss.
Fuck that.
It will pass. It always passes. Just like time and pain.
Though it would just be nice if it hurt a little less to type but instead every word is a testament to my dedication, a measure of pain meted out one sentence at a time as only a masochist can truly appreciate.
I suppose it would also be nice if I hadn't just written this entire entry to be nothing more than the continuation of the incredibly obvious information blackout on my life while I go and get some things sorted out but sometimes it's a necessary evil.
Much like having to touch stuff right now.
I will not be made useless
I won't be idled with despair
I will gather myself around my faith
for light does the darkness most fear
My hands are small, I know,
but they're not yours they are my own
but they're not yours they are my own
and I am never broken
