My Hands Anonymous

My hair used to fall out because I thought I was strong, my heartbeat used to waver because I thought I was in control, and my hands used to shake because, for the first time, I thought I was beautiful.

My hands have done great things. I used my hands to give my best friend the Heimlich maneuver when she choked, to hold my baby cousin when she scraped her knee in foursquare, and to rub my grandmother’s back when she remembered that her love was gone. But I also used my hands to do awful things. I pushed my finger down my throat to expel the Nutella pizza my parents forced me to eat on my fifteenth birthday, I used the pen between my fingers to draw lines on my thighs where I contemplated cutting the fat off with a chainsaw, and I clenched my fist to hit my stomach every time it growled during a lecture.

Addiction is consuming. I can be addicted to listening to Miles Davis because his trumpet fills that little scar where someone stomped on my palm in my last soccer game, or I can be addicted to the smell of paper because it reminds me that nothing compares to running my fingertips along the spine of my old copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. But I can also be addicted to calculating my body mass index because I loathe the extra fat...