sorry, cat

You know what's interesting? The way seemingly unimportant, miniscule things can be so influential...such a part of what makes you the kind of person that you are. Something like maybe one of your ears is higher than the other, or whether you hair is curly or straight. The way you mother cooks, the way your father treats waiters, whether or not your brother or sister likes the way you laugh...

The other night I was scratching my cat's ears, and i think i was frustrating her because all i could use were my blunt fingertips, since any of the white part of my nails have long since been bitten off. And i thought about my hands. They're of normal size, i think, kind of square; they're strong. From my mom's side. I looked at them and noticed that they aren't ugly, but they aren't very pretty either. My sister has very delicate hands. They're slender with long, elegant fingers, the opposite of mine really. My friends and family know all about my bell nails. I wonder whether or not they would be straighter as they grew, but i'll never know because they break so easily. I also crack my knuckles. It's really gross.

The way my hands look doesn't bother me too much, but the other day i was thinking of how i would look with pretty hands and i realised it would change a lot about me. If the skin on them was smooth, and my fingers were long and elegant, i probably would be much more averse to soiling them. If my nails were long and straight, I would probably be less afraid to attract attention to them, i might color them or something, or at least i wouldn't cover them up when i'm around other people.

But because i have no reason to be concerned about them, i can oil paint without gloves, i can garden without worrying about getting dirt under my nails, i can write notes on my hands and let my sister draw all over them and not give it a thought. I can't put keys on a keyring, or open a sodacan easily, but i have friends to do that...(;

The last time i ever had a manicure was for my 13th birthday. My mom took me, and i was so excited to see how pretty my nails would look when they were done! Yet I remember being disappointed because my hands didn't change...they still looked the same afterward as they did before...except for the pink nailpolish.
Even now as i type, i look at them and see the faint freckles, the smears of red hair dye from coloring my sister's hair, and the single ring on my left hand, where a wedding ring would be, and i can't imagine them looking any other way. They are a part of me, completely unique, as i don't know anyone else that has hands like mine. Sometimes I like that, but most often i admittedly don't. Most of the time, as i mentioned before, i'm embarrassed, even a bit ashamed of them.

It's hard to accept what's different about us, whether we like our "imperfections" or not. I consider imperfection to be one of the greater contributors to a person's individual beauty, male or female. And yet everyone want to change these lovely, God-gived perfect attributes on their physical frame. It's mysterious, it's amusing, it's tragic.

But that's the way we are.