One handed

Last night I only had one hand.

It was my right hand, which I kept covered with a red satin glove, glittering all over with tiny sparkling Swarovskis. It was my only hand and I had made it my artefact, my most treasured body part.

Living with one hand was uncomfortable. It made me cranky that others had two. It meant they had more than me. They were privileged. So I kept expecting…nay, demanding that all those others provide for me. Feed me, clothe me and help me move things around.

Those Others were not just other people, also the government systems and the entire Universe. All existence had to be on my beck and call.

Because I only had one hand.

A horde of random people crossed my path, each helping me a little. I remembered none of their faces. Rather, they looked like robots, running around and doing things, sometimes helping me. Still, most times they didn’t and it made me angry at them. What are they doing, not paying attention to me? I only have one hand!

While I focused on my one flaw, I didn’t see others as humans. I was owed that help, that assistance. The world-at-large or the almighty God himself owed me for making me broken. Everything and everyone around me was just a tool for paying back that horrendous wrong that had been done to me. 

I kept demanding assistance and was bitterly vexed when it didn’t come fast enough. I used sarcastic remarks to convey my feelings of frustration at my own brokenness; inwardly was seething anger towards the ineptitude of the world around me. Can’t they see how much I’m suffering? Why is the Universe not fixing my life faster? Why do I still have one hand?

However much people helped me, it wasn’t enough. It didn’t really change the fact that I was one-handed.

As soon as I realised the bottomless pit that was my neediness, I snapped out of it and looked around me, trying to see what was going on in the minds of all those random people who still surrounded me. Curiously, as soon as I stopped demanding my own life from them, I could finally see them in theirs.

What I saw was a room filled with screaming babies, each feeling frustrated, scared, entitled and demanding to get some care, love and support, because the world had somehow failed to provide for them too. For all of them.

I only had one hand, but proverbially, so did everyone else.

The alarm clock rang.

The vision of the red satin glove still lingered in my waking. I placed both my hands on my belly and took a deep breath, glad it had been a dream. What had I just witnessed?

A world of angry helpless babies demanding for everyone else to love and take care of them? Promising hellfire to those failing to take care of them the way they wanted? Dishing out judgements left and right to anyone making them feel their pain and discomfort? 

Ouch, that looks eerily similar to the world we live in.

A mad world full of broken people, many of whom rub us the wrong way. A world where the notion of self-importance and juvenile sense of entitlement tear at the threads of sanity and civility. Where the concepts of love and loving are too often confused with attachment and ownership, coming with a set of contracts and an endless list of demands on the other person. Love me just right, or else.

Personally, I was ashamed of myself. Of the teenage asshole way I acted in the dream. Of they way I dismissed everything and everyone, for the pain which I refused to bear, so everyone else had to. And if they didn’t want to, oh the rage that had rushed through me, ready to smite them all down for not seeing how I just had that one hand.

The dream had touched something tender in me. All the solace-consuming and finger-pointing I had been doing throughout my life and even more since I started my healing journeys, uncovering patterns of abuse and neglect.

Too well I know how to be helpless and clueless dealing with the forces of life and the demands of the societies and systems I exist in. How to breathe frustration out to the world around me.

Can I stop with the disappointed bitterness whenever the world isn’t catering to my personal process?

Can I look at myself naked and open – with all the glittering gloves off – and bring a steady stream of self-love into this-right-here without the incessant desire to point fingers at my parents, grandparents, siblings, ex-boyfriends, past-life karma or whatever else I’ve been choosing to blame my discomfort on?

Can I accept that no-one owes me anything, but I can direct how I feel about it?

At least I have hope for myself.

Because I do believe that we are here to find love. Not the demanding, entitled-love, but the real-fun-playful-loving love. And that love will turn all those screaming babies into giggling babies, because it’s just too real and too delightful to feel anything else but joy. I believe that no matter how broken and how much in pain, everyone has that love inside them. We should just use it more.

Exactly, we should use it more, not demand others to use it on us.
That’s what my dream wanted to tell me.

Towards that juicy, unashamed, giggling-baby love, I cross my fingers on both hands.
Feels good to have two.