The Story of My Middle Finger

I cussed but I've never been much for the gesture, the middle finger.

Yet. I did immortalize one particular moment with a photo in my favorite monochrome setting - my middle finger adorned with a huge-ass diamond of costume glass.

It was defiant. It was art. It suited the poem I was writing then, and it still suits me now… provided I still get to keep my finger. If not, that photo will have to serve as its obituary.

My middle finger has always been used in the right way - and no, I don't mean for picking my nose. It's for more decent, deliberate purposes.

When I use a cotton pad, I anchor the ends down with my pointer and ring fingers, leaving the center of the pad taut across the length of my middle finger. This turns my middle finger into a soft, controlled bridge, allowing me to wipe with a gentle, even pressure. It also has the gentlest touch that applies eye cream without dragging the delicate skin.

I type with all ten fingers with a minor glitch. The spelling isn't wrong; the sequence is. I know the word in my mind, only to watch the words scrambled in the screen.

You might wonder how I could turn a middle finger into an entire topic of this piece here. Perhaps I'm the only one odd enough to do it, but then again, I am one of the unluckiest people on earth.

You could call it clumsiness, but 'cursed' feels more accurate.

The universe seems to have a vendetta against my left hand. With my dominant side being the target, it feels like a conspiracy to take away the very essence of my capability - and what makes me, me.

Photo by Anna Savina on Unsplash

If you were a left-handed person born in the wrong time or the wrong place, you would understand the weight of the backstory so many of us carry.

You'd know what it feels like to be told that your very nature is unnatural, or even evil. In that world, eating with my left hand was a transgression; writing with it was a crime deserving of a beating.

Adults snatching pencils from my grip, forcing them into my right hand with sharp threats if whenever I instinctively switched to my left again. They tried to break my nature.

The world was built for the right-handed majority but it's better now - with products finally catering to us.

Even a simple meal is a battlefield; if you sit to the left of a right-handed person, every bite becomes a chopstick fight. And I was usually the one scolded for being in the way.

Don't even start with it's nothing personal. It is - and it always has been.

My left wrist was permanently injured during that damn fall in 2016 in that haunted house - though the house itself wasn't the origin of the story.

It was the cultivation of a person playing with fire within the walls of my own home. She brought in dark spirits and reared them until they turned on me. When I refused to submit, I was attacked.

The most physically serious assault was when I was dragged down the stairs by unseen hands. I broke the fall with my left hand to keep my nose or my entire face from being split open on the stairs

Years later, I still cannot lift much. I rely on trolleys for groceries and maneuvers just to find leverage.

When a task requires the strength of both hands, I am forced to press the entire load onto my right side. The weakness in my left wrist eventually destroyed my right one. Now, the damage is complete on both sides.

Not long after that fall, I lost the dexterity in both hands - a casualty of my mental health problems and the medication.

Dignity vanished at the dinner table. I would scoop a spoonful of rice, only for my hands to tremble so violently that I was left with just a few grains; soup was even worse. I couldn't bear the thought of being seen in such a state.

There were moments I wished I could forgo utensils entirely and eat like a primitive savage. At least my palms could hold something substantial; even if I trembled and spilled half, I might finally get a mouthful.

As I began to recover and my medication was adjusted, I set out to retrain my hands.

I started with paint-by-numbers, though I wasn't exactly painting; I used the smallest brushes I could find and worked dot by dot. It was a mess. My grip would fail, and the brush would go flying, sending splashes of paint across the furniture and the sofa. But I refused to stop. Eventually, it worked - I completed piece after piece.

I pushed further, learning to make rosaries and jewelry, before eventually trying my hand at carpentry. I lacked the strength for traditional methods, so I adapted.

I used my elbows, my shoulders, and even my feet for leverage and strength. I couldn't do it the normal way, but I did it anyway. If you could overlook the process - which was unconventional and even funny at times - you would see the result: small, solid pieces that serve as tangible proof I snatched myself back from the black hole.

In doing so, I reclaimed myself - my mental health, my grip, and my dexterity.

There was one time my cat got so sick I thought he was going to leave me. For weeks, I was a shell of myself, crying and pouring everything into his care.

We went back and forth to the vets, but they were irresponsible - they misdiagnosed him and refused to investigate further. I was so exhausted and distracted by the fight to save him that I sliced my palm open like a scene from a horror movie while opening a can of food.

That was the story: my cat's illness landed me in the ER. My left hand, once again, took the blow.

A few days ago, the most ridiculous and brutal thing happened. I was trying to hang heavy-duty magnetic hooks on the washing machine - industrial ones rated for a 42kg load.

Without warning, two of them snapped together, pinching the flesh of my finger with such sudden, immense force that the shock almost knocked me off my feet. I felt my entire body go weak, as if the energy had been drained out of me in an instant.

I struggled, too weak to pull the magnets apart, until I finally managed to wrench my finger free. A piece of my flesh remained trapped between them, leaving a deep, hollow gap behind. It wouldn't have felt so gruesome if I could have separated those magnets.

The pain was sickening; it reached far beyond the skin, shooting straight into the nerves deep inside and leaving me physically unwell.

Once I recovered my strength, I cleaned the wound and tried to move on - but of course, it wasn't that simple, or I wouldn't be writing this at all.

Every finger has its duty, even the ones we don't use directly; they provide the balance and support we don't notice until it's gone.

For now, I am reduced to writing this on my phone, my two thumbs the only tools left to me, using the desktop only to fix the mistakes.

After a few days of peace, it has turned red, swollen, and angry.

I am terrified. I was crying and worried all yesterday, and even now my mind keeps spiraling through the darkest possibilities.

What if sepsis sets in? What if the flesh rots? What if it leads to amputation?

When you've had to snatch yourself back from the edge so many times, you never truly stop worrying that the next time will be the one where you finally lose the fight.

This hole in my finger seems too trivial for the emergency ward, yet the fear of how bad it could get feels massive.

I can only sit here, soaking it in salt water, hoping against hope that my body will find a way to heal once again.

©Britt H.

Thank you for reading this.

More about the person behind the writing in My Introductory Post

If you’d like to support my writing — you can consider buying me a coffee here Any support holds immense significance for a disabled neurodivergent like me.