“Your hands are so sweaty.” These were the five words that struck fear in my heart every time I heard them. It made me feel so angry and misunderstood. They could never understand what it was like, constantly wiping my hands on my pants to no avail. What it was like to have my keyboard disgustingly drenched in sweat every time I took notes in class. They could never understand the unbelievable agony and dread I felt at shaking someone’s hand.
I envied them, too. I envied anyone who could just confidently shake hands with anyone they liked, ready for any interview, any introduction. Ready to take on the world, it seemed. With a good handshake, you could hide your insecurities with a confident front. No one but you would know how scared you really were. With sweaty hands, there was no hiding that. You immediately seemed anxious, uncertain and insecure. The other person might not say anything, but you know how they really feel. Or they might say something about how clammy your hands are, confirming how bad your condition really is.
I really envied seeing two people holding hands without a care in the world, without feeling any self-consciousness at all. I wondered what it was like to feel that way, to have no care at all what someone thought of your hands. Or to have them feel dry. How I missed that feeling, of having no fear of what people thought of me and my hands. I longed for that connection too, wishing I had someone I could hold hands with. But I know I never will.Â
I suffer from a condition called hyperhidrosis, specifically in my hands. I’ve had it ever since I was twelve years old, and I find myself reminiscing on my childhood when terms like “hyperhidrosis” and “excessive sweating” didn’t even exist to me. I don’t know how or why it started, and I’ve done everything I can in my research to find a solution, or at least find a reason why. There is no reason, and there is no cure. Sure, they say you can get surgery for it — at the potential cost of your life. You can get Botox injections — but you’ll have to come back every six months. You can try a special cream that’ll be sure to stop it — just make sure to put it on 123,678 times a day. But there’s no permanent cure, which was all I really wanted. Â
I have vivid memories of attempting to shake hands or giving high fives to people back in middle school, but always getting remarks of disgust of how sweaty my hands were, which traumatized me to the point where I now refuse to give any handshakes or touch anybody else’s hands. People have tried to give me handshakes only for me to respond with a fist bump instead, to which they will confusedly give me a fist bump back. I say that I don’t hold hands because I’m a germaphobe, but it’s all a lie (I’ve literally eaten pizza out of a trash can, a story for another day). I’m scared of telling the truth, of being shamed for a condition I can’t control once again.Â
And if I’m being honest, I don’t like the way my hands look either. I wish for slender fingers with elegant nails that are always well done. Yet my nails are almost never done because I’m not allowed to wear nail polish at my job, with my hands often smudged in pencil or pen from all the writing I do and even my nails admittedly get dirty sometimes, so they’re always cut short. I just wish I had beautiful hands.
But then I remember how I’ve been playing piano for the last twelve years, how it saved me in my darkest days and let me express all my pain and all my sadness. The joy I feel from getting new sheet music and printing it out with my hard-earned money, or finally playing a difficult piece well. How therapeutic it feels to play a sad song when I feel despair. The surprise and delight on other people’s faces when I play a song and they ask, “Oh, can you play this song too?“
Playing piano makes me feel like all my troubles have drifted away, even if it’s only temporarily. When I’m playing, I feel as if I have a purpose, as if my hands have a purpose. I finally feel unstoppable, and I no longer feel ashamed of my hands. Instead, I feel appreciative. I feel grateful for everything my hands have done for me, for how many years of practice and frustration it took to get to this point.Â
And suddenly I remember cooking with my parents as a kid, with my dad guiding my hands teaching me how to delicately slide the knife through the onion. “Let the knife do the work for you,” he says. And I remember late nights, of hours of reading, where it was summer and the crickets were chirping and I was reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for the first time and it was so, so late but I just had to finish the book, I just couldn’t put it down. I flipped the pages one by one, and then as the sun came up I was so devastated that the series was over that I wrote a letter to J.K Rowling at my desk asking her if it was really the end, that we would never know what would happen next. Â
Hours of typing on this laptop writing countless essays, countless stories, in the hopes that one day all this writing I’m doing could mean something. Of sobbing uncontrollably as I pour my heart out into a journal I furiously scribble in, hoping no one ever reads my gloomy, melodramatic thoughts. I write, write, and write, in pencil or pen it matters not, write so fast that every year in school I have at least one teacher that tells me I have some of the worst handwriting they’ve ever seen. I have some teachers that refuse to grade my work because it’s too difficult to read. I can’t even feel offended because it’s true; my handwriting looks like chicken scratch.
I remember being a freshman in college, in the hospital holding my grandma’s hand for the last time before she passed.Â
My hands, like everyone else, tell a story. They hold precious memories from years of experience one can only live through to earn. I hate my hands for the shame they bring, and I appreciate and love them for everything they’ve done for me. I never really know how I feel, just knowing they’re there for better or for worse.
These days I take medicine for my hands, which helps significantly even if it’s not permanent. But I’m grateful for it all the same. And I understand like everything in life, there must be a balance.