My hands fill the world with pain.  They cause destruction at almost every turn.  This is something I learned at a very young age.  I remember being a little kid, more than three or four, and my mother had a hold of my wrists.  She was telling me how bad I was.  I had colored all over my closet door.  My hands were bad; they ruined things.  That’s what I learned.

As I grew older, this pattern continued.  My hands kept breaking various objects, and I kept learning how bad I was.  From dropping glasses to shooting BBs through windows, my hands destroyed most of what they touched.  My handwriting was atrocious and remained that way.  I lacked the ability to draw, paint, color, or create anything with my hands.  My hands aren’t a mechanism for art or creation; they’re for destruction.  That’s what I have learned.

As a teenager, the destruction that was left in the wake of my touch was exacerbated.  I used my hands to break hearts, to withhold love, and to isolate myself from others.  One day the inevitable happened, and I destroyed worlds ten times over when my hands gripped a gun and my finger pulled a trigger.

As I write this, I look at my hands.  They look like hers.  Every line, crack, print, swollen knuckle, I got from her.  Seeing these day after day, moment after moment, fills me with pain.  Still, after all these years, my hands cause pain.  Endless, inescapable pain – that’s what I’ve learned.

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