Right hand

When I was single I felt like I had no right hand. The rest of my body was functioning and complete, but all I could fixate on and obsess over was the fact that that I was missing this seemingly vital part. ‘A right hand is not that important’, some tried to assure me. ‘Look, you can still do everything that you need to do. Has it ever stopped you from travelling or working or living a normal life? You have 10 times more fun than me! Haven’t you laughed and cried and had a whole pile of fun with just your left hand. Who needs a right hand anyway, sure they only bring more trouble?’ But, in spirit I was a right-handed girl to the depths of my soul. However, unbearably, agonisingly, no matter what I did, I failed to secure one. Many of the potential right hands stayed around for a little while but soon admitted either directly or indirectly that they were looking for an attachment with just a little more, something. No, they couldn’t say exactly what that something was, just that it was something just slightly more slightly more, well, something than what I had. (or something.)

Don’t get me wrong, I know that many single people do not feel this way at all and would be hugely offended by the fact that they could ever be seen as incomplete. But, personally, for me, I just did, rational or not. I felt I needed it, not only to make life smoother and simpler, but, increasingly urgently, to reach out and grab the precious bounty (read:babies) that only it could bring me, bounty that in a very short space of time would no longer be possible or available if I did not have this right hand, and soon.
Others sympathised, perhaps a little too much, and I felt their pity strongly and heavily. They had good intentions in trying to help suggest ways to obtain a right hand. ‘Just stop thinking about it and it will happen naturally, just when you least expect it.’ Or ‘I know someone who knows someone who would have just the right hand for you…well with a few fingers missing and not quite the right fit but if you’re game…’ or ‘I know someone who got one just at the last moment when their arm was just about to shrivel up…’. I appreciated their concern but in some ways it only served to feed my growing internal desperation, panic and despair.

Others were impatient with me. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you have everything else going for you, every other part of your body is healthy and complete. Look at your right foot compared to mine. And I’ve never seen someone blessed with such a strong left hand. Stop being so bitter and jealous of others. Take off your rose-coloured glasses, having a right hand is really not all it’s cracked up to be, you’re turning it into an idol…and then you’ll definitely never get one!’

Worse still, were the lies I believed about how different I was from everyone else, and how people were judging or pitying me solely on my right-hand status. I felt, wrongly, that my lack of right hand was the first thing people noticed about me, that it was a screaming, glaring, blinding void. I imagined that people with right hands were being invited to all sorts of wonderful social events that I was automatically excluded from, that they were all sitting around comparing their right hands, and all of the bounty that they had grabbed with them. This was perhaps true to some extent, after all it is neater and simpler to have people round who all have a right hand. Some people worry that they could not invite only one person with no right hand to dinner, they would have to invite me along with another person with no right hand, or else everyone would feel self-conscious and uncomfortable with the lack of symmetry. What if someone said the wrong thing, or if they wanted to have a right-hand focused conversation, but would not be able to include me so would have to try to make desperate, self-conscious small talk about my elbow skin or nostril? However, ironically, I was busy enjoying many social events with my wonderful fellow non-right-handed friends, and enjoying very deeply the humour and richness of being able to share on this level with those in a similar situation.

The hardest thing of all was the change in those who, in time, after having obtained a right hand, grabbed the bounty. Their heavy, wonderful haul inevitably restricted them a great deal and they could not leave it easily. This meant that it was easier for those who had bounty to stay with it together, or they were more prepared to travel to others with bounty out of solidarity in the shared knowledge how hard it is to juggle this weighty treasure. It was also easier for them to talk about the details of the bounty and help to allay each other’s fears and compare their loot. Obviously with no bounty to worry about leaving, it would be unreasonable for me to expect anyone to leave their bounty to come to me, I felt the reality of that but at the same time the difficulty of having to frequently travel to the doorstep of everyone with bounty, when the activities I had taken on to distract myself from my lack of bounty also kept me very busy. As well as naturally feeling more distant from those with bounty due to their inevitable new juggling of time, it was more painful still to watch those who had bounty somehow drawing closer to each other because of their shared experience. They envied my carefree lack of bounty and how I was free to come to see them whenever I pleased but instead I just felt even more keenly the lack of my right hand, the consequent lack of bounty and a terrifying, dreadful escalating sense of loneliness, hopelessness and darkness. It was unbearably frustrating to know that as well as having no right hand I could be facing no access to bounty, when the seemingly unsolvable root cause for lacking the former did not seem to be connected to the skills required for the latter. But don’t complain, don’t be a stuck record, don’t bring everyone else down, don’t give up hope or voice your fears or you’ll become such a negative person you’ll lose the friends you do have… so much effort to just stay sane and so much guilt and fear about doing, or feeling, or saying, or thinking or just being, somehow always, the wrong thing.

Then, one day, I got a right hand. A wonderful, brilliantly fitting, snug, secure and fingertip-tinglingly right right hand. It did not come out of the blue when I had all my ducks lined up or when I was blissfully unaware of my need or desire for it, or when I had cracked a magic formula. It came at a time when I was screaming out to God for it until I was hoarse, when most of my prayers consisted of ‘When?’ or ‘Why’ or just ‘Help’. It came at a time when I was starting to feel like an empty shell, when all my coping mechanisms had rusted and stuck fast, and I felt I had nothing left to give anyone. It came through grace.

Since then I have realised a number of things. Firstly, what I always knew deep down, that I am still only human, I still feel concern and anxiety, sometimes even more so than before. There is a whole new set of things to worry about with a right hand, I can’t just take it off and disappear, or blame all of my bad moods on my lack of it anymore. I also can't guarantee that I will have it forever. Life of course feels much richer, fuller and brighter than it did without a right hand, but it is still life and it is still just a regular body with a regular right hand that is taken for granted, and feels pain and bruises and is fallible and breakable. It’s not some kind of crazy invincible robot claw, or set of eagle wings. I now have a glimmer of hope that I may have the potential to try and grab bounty in due course, but as yet no solid knowledge that this will be a reality. The truth is that as bounty even becomes a slightly more real possibility its shimmer fades a little and the heaviness of it becomes more evident and slightly frightening.

Another truth I have realised is that people judged me on my lack of right hand a lot less than I thought they did. The world kept spinning and many people barely batted an eyelid when I got my long-awaited right hand. A lot of people were very happy for me, but it didn’t affect them anywhere as much as it did me, and our friendships continued much the same as before. I don’t feel that people award me any kind of status like I used to imagine they would to people with a right hand, instead they just like me if they happen to like me, respect me if I earn it and dislike me if they were going to anyway . I haven’t been flooded with invites to all sorts of right hander dinner parties or had any conspirational whispers of You’re in our gang now, you’re one of us. I still have to make an effort, to earn and maintain friendship and I still feel anxious to be included and hate to miss out.

As I reflect on those who have walked with me on my long journey, both those with right hands and those without, it’s hard to know what the best way for them to deal with me was. I remember that sometimes the very presence of those with right hands bothered me just because of pure jealousy and even the sight of their smiling face would make me want to turn away in pain. Others said or did the wrong thing, either out of ignorance, or thoughtlessness, or just not knowing what the right thing to say or do was. Truth be told, most of the time I didn’t know what that was either.

On reflection, the best thing anyone ever did was just to put their hand in mine and take part in my journey, and let me be part of their journey, exactly the way that I was.