(paws?)

now that i really think about it, i don't like my hands. when i'm just sitting about, all alone and quiet, i sometimes look at my hands, and it always takes me a moment or two before i realise just how ugly they are. in private thoughts, i've always said that i liked the calluses and the rough spots; that i wanted my hands, and indeed, my entire body, to become a network of jointed calluses and scar tissue. in thoughts, i've always been adamantly against any form of weakness, even in my body. i guess i thought that the simpering sort of insidious evil i hated could only be given the name of femininity, and that soft skin was the mark of femininity. it would only follow, then, that calluses and scar tissue were the way to go. thinly veiled sadness is all; even by myself i resolve not to show emotion. to whom would i show it? it would be irrational, i reason, to cry for an audience of none. this is discounting myself, as always, of course. i used to be a bit enraptured with nail polish, to tell the truth. i used to look at my hands and think about how long i would grow out my fingernails, and how i would paint them a different colour every day when they grew past an inch. marvellous claws, i wanted. i still paint my stubby, brittle fingernails quite often, but in purposefully strange and ugly stains. i twist up my short knobbly fingers and look at them, thinking about how embarrassed i'd be if someone ever tried to hold my hand. as if any affection that anyone could possibly have for me would dissipate at one touch of my indelicate paws. now that's irrationality for you. don't talk to me about irrationality. i like to retreat into my own somewhere; sometime when you'd proffer your own effeminately knuckled hands.