Engaging Introduction

Let me tell you about the afternoon I became obsessed with the back of my own hands.

I was sitting across from a friend at a coffee shop when she grabbed my wrist and said, “Wow, your veins are really… visible.” She didn’t say it like it was a bad thing. She said it like she’d just noticed a new freckle or a change in my hair color. But something about those words lodged in my brain.

That night, I couldn’t stop looking at my hands. The blue-green lines winding beneath my skin. The way they stood out against my pale winter complexion. Had they always been that prominent? Was I dehydrated? Was something wrong?

I spent the next week surreptitiously studying other people’s hands. The barista. My mother. The guy in the elevator. Some had veins like mine. Some didn’t. I found no pattern, no answer, just a growing awareness that I had no idea what was normal and what wasn’t.