The first thing the doctor said when I was born wasn’t “it’s a perfect baby girl” or anything similar to that.

It was “Oh no, her hand…”

I was born with a malformation of my left hand, which pretty much means I have no fingers, the beginning of knuckles and little nubby things.

I was the only one who didn’t cry at my birth. The first thing my father ever said about my future was, “How will she ever get married with one hand?”

The doctors then proceeded to give my mom a private room and a steak and lobster dinner as a “condolence.” I think it’s funny that my mom got a free steak and lobster out of the whole ordeal–at least something good happened.

My dad was a perfectionist and was ashamed, my mom thought I was punishment for the abortion she had at 16, because she knew how cruel kids were going to be (and no mom wants to know that in advance).

The rest of my family was informed something was “wrong” so they started crying in the waiting room, although when my grandma was finally admitted, and saw that it was my hand, she laughed at my parents and told them it wasn’t a big deal, which just added to my dad’s growing dislike of my mother’s family. Then my older (but not oldest brother), who was 4 at the time, locked himself in the bathroom and repeatedly pushed the emergency button while throwing a tantrum, because he wasn’t allowed to hold me first–or at all–because he had ADHD and he liked to throw things a lot.

I never had too many awkward moments with my hand, although I was supposedly going to be left handed, discovered by my parents when I tried to do everything with my left hand. When I finally figured out it wouldn’t work, I used my right hand awkwardly, like I was trying to make it work like my left one. I still have moments when I will reach up to a door knob with my left hand and bat at it for a while, wondering why it isn’t working, until I remember, oh, yeah, duh. And there are moments when I’ll be walking down the street and see my hand reflected in a building and be like, GASP WTF..oh. okay. Don’t even ask me how I forget, because I don’t know.

I don’t feel awkward very often, but others do, they ask the dumbest questions. One of my favorites was a 14 year old, who stared at my hand before asking “…how do you eat?”

Credit: Transcendent_image @ PostSecret Chat

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