Love Letter. Subject: Feet.

I burnt my right hand, my writing hand, so this'll be short.

Burned. I have burned myself once before. I was 8. I was a little chemist. I had learned that glass was made from quartz and I also knew, from my elementary research,  that quartz was in sand, along with the sodium bicarbonate skeletons of shells--mostly mollusk and crustacean. It was Oregon. Family reunion. I had found a bark tray, onto which I could place a mound of sand, and placed it in the fire. Growing impatient, I had pulled it out to see if it was working--if a physical change was occurring in the silica crystals. But the wood was like firewood by then and my hand flesh burnt, my curious fingers singed. Throbbing, my hand plunged into the nearby Pacific as my dad yelled at me. I was never the cautious one. I was always the closest to death.

Tonight, it was cooking with unfamiliar kitchenware that caused me to burn my hand again. At first, it was an annoyance, and only that. Then it became a conversation starter, as I wrapped my hand around cold, bottled malt beverages and a huge, and unwieldy bag of ice. Finally, it burned, the pain like I so vividly remember thirteen years prior. Tightening, throbbing, waves of pain. When I finally looked down at my right hand, I noticed the raised white outlines of the burn, a burn pattern I remembered picking at once it finally became somewhat painless in third grade. I remembered that first night of the first time I had been a burn victim, age eight, lying on a couch in a rented, vacation apartment, holding my hand in a melting ice tray. I'd wake up, again and again and again, to find my hand not submerged in water, or being frightened by the lack of iciness of the remaining ice tray. I welcomed the sunrise as the time when my parents would awake and help me with my problem, a problem I didn't understand medically, but a problem I was nevertheless fascinated by. Even though I would never complain directly to my father about an injury I had self-inflicted, knowing he would hate the silly personality that had resulted in severe harm and the lack of stoicism I displayed when I sought comfort, having him just glance at my hand and not rush me to a hospital or offer to shoot my hand full of lidocaine would be satisfactory enough for a surgeon's daughter at any age to continue living somewhat care-free.

Too similar, was and is this burn pattern, however. I thought about the last incident, and how, at that time, I didn't have diabetes. I had been a healthy child. This had been a small scar that would heal. Too similar. I stared at my hand now, in the fluorescent lights of a bathroom, then I felt my throat closing around a whimpered "no" as I bent my knees and crashed down on the tiled floor. "No. no. no!" I kept sobbing, my face contorted into a Luke Skywalker-esque emotion, reminiscent to his response in episode V, of Vader's claim: "I am your father." Luke's face wasn't pretty. Nor was mine. My hand looked just like it had as a child. It was the same degree of injury. I had inflicted the same amount of pain on myself. I was an idiot. No self-respecting daughter of two self-respecting surgeons suffers the same pain twice. All my life, antiobiotics and topical pain-killers had flowed fresh from my parents at any sign of injury or discomfort. It was when I was without them, however, that I learned how to feel vulnerable when my physical body began to topple the psychologically upheld walls of my tangible being.

The first time I had cried at college had occurred when I had walked back from our crappy student health center, the threat of swine flu bearing down on the east coast, with no one, no one medically qualified, who cared about me as anything more than a college student. I was a diabetic. I was anemic, I had eczema, psioriasis, depression. I had asthma. I had a battered body. Would they give me the extra care I required? Or would they just let me die as a casualty in the impending pandemic?

But what forced me to feel emotions with my physical pain wasn't my scaly and now scarred right hand so much as my feet. Stretched out in front of me, tapping the white tiled wall, I realized in that instant that I wasn't going to heal the damage diabetes had wrought me, like my youthful hand had healed the damage of a curiosity-induced burn. I was a goddamn fool. I only had one body. And my favorite part of my body was my feet. Luckily I had never burned them, never walked across coals to spite them. But they, like my hands, were super sensitive. They were so beautiful, and what was I doing for them? Nothing. "But I love you so much," I said, speaking to my feet over the sound of rushing cold water against my upraised hand, flopping in a white, porcelain sink. I pushed them against the toilet bowl to get a better look at them. I had recently gotten a pedicure and blue toe-nails looked back at me, expressionless. "I need you so much," I thought about how fast I could run across fields and over small hills, how my feet had managed to get my over-stretched, awkward body to race into the air, defiant of everything I had previously known as a swimmer unaccustomed to moving on land. I loved my feet, I really did. I stood up and looked at a mirror, my red eyes outlined behind my white glasses. I glanced down at my feet again. A large, pronounced vein created a semi-circle arc on the tops of both my feet. They reminded me of the scars flippers, or more specifically, Zoomers, had left on my feet during swimming. My feet had become cut up. But I smiled, sadly, saying, "You made me so fast. I was faster than anyone else when I used you. I was the fastest. I was the best."

I sat back down, hand still extended above my head as if I was waiting to be called upon by a professor. Who would say that their favorite part of themselves is their feet? No one. I hadn't heard a single person. And suddenly, the cruelness struck me and I bawled. I lost myself then, uneven to even say words. Why would God knowingly put my feet at high alert with a disease like diabetes, knowing that I loved my feet more than anything else? Hadn't he seen the picture of me, age five or six, in Hawaii, smiling next to a bronze statue of an Oriental dragon, in a cute little dress, my feet folded over themselves? I have seen that picture. My feet are huge. My older sister would laugh about them. She would use them as insult fodder. I was such an odd child. Everything about me wasn't right. But my feet, that was something quantitatively wrong with me, as I quickly grew into a size ten as my sister stopped at seven. My little sister would join along in taunting me, because she was young and impressionable and small-footed as well.

There are many amazing things about me, I realize now, as a rational adult. Physically, I also have a beautiful face. I have a nice, or hilarious, laugh. I am tall. I am somewhat skinny. But my feet will always be special to me. Diabetes threatens them. Feet need protecting when you are a diabetic. I thought about what a bad diabetic I had been. Did I even know what my blood sugar was then, as I cried, sunk into a corner in a strange bathroom? No. I didn't. I was horrendous. I wiggled my toes. I cried harder.

"I don't know what I would do without you," I whispered, tears touching my lips. Then I yelled, slightly louder, but not louder than the rushing water in the sink: "I couldn't live without you."

Odd thought. I stood up, cognizant of both the innappropriateness and righteousness of the things I had said to my feet for thirty minutes, confined in a college house's bathroom. I promised then and there, that not only would I never think disparaging thoughts about anyone without the ability to walk, but I would marry a podiatrist. I had to. I would check my blood sugar regularly. I would stop eating teddy grahams. I would stop drinking soda, even the fancy, yuppy soda with real cane sugar that gives carbon dioxide a bigger burst and tickles your nose. I would do whatever. Yes, whatever. I would do everything my pretentious, but much needed, and at that moment, much missed, endocrinologist advised. As long as I had my ten toes. I needed them to support me. I needed them to work.

If I couldn't feel, touch, twiddle, write, or caress with my fingers, fine. But I would always need the ability to run on my feet.