Last summer I hurt my hand--ripped the tendon from the top knuckle of the middle finger.

It was the end of a camping trip at Crater Lake National Park. I was bent over in the tent, stuffing my sleeping bag into its sack--giving one final push. The finger caught in a fold and bent too far forward and I heard the pop.

It has yet to regain fluid flexibility--it’s become the slow, swollen, red-headed, uncomprehending step-child of the right hand finger family.

A few years previously on April Fools Day I was using a paring knife to pop the ring off a plastic bottle before recycling it. The knife cut through the ring instead and the point jabbed the back of my left hand--a tiny wound really but it sprayed blood over the walls and completely severed a tendon to my thumb.

And the April Fools day after that I got shoved and fell--just out of the gate--at the 10K. Ran the 6 miles bleeding from an elbow and knee, sore at the hip, and didn’t realize till the subsequent week that the right shoulder was jammed and disabled.

Each of the three injuries required months of rehab. I was so ashamed--to be such an expense. Needing fixing. Thousands of dollars.

The first time seems like an accident. The second time feels like a wakeup call--an urgent wakeup call from an unknown place. One you can barely decipher: Look. Look and see what you are doing.

You get a roaring in the ears so you can’t hear it, a clouding of the eyes so you can’t see it. It was an accident! Everybody says so!

And the third time--no. no. Not hurt again--please.

No conscious intent to cripple myself. No conscious desire to be the masochist. Yet after this last accident: couldn’t finger-pick the guitar, couldn’t shoot baskets, could barely type my seditious literature and correspondence. What had I done?

How to be a very good girl: Pop a tendon and disable that stubborn uniqueness that keeps insisting on wanting out, on wanting life.

I understand what the Procrustean bed was all about. I am the hapless traveller strapped to the too-small bed. I am the determined Procrustes, using a knife instead of a hatchet to fix me.

If I could just chop myself to fit my assigned space so that the world would not notice me too much, not be angry that I am a far bigger, messier and more blasphemous person than I appear. Maybe if I cut this off, slump and bend, stay at home, don’t be too awake, stay numb stay dumb--maybe then I’ll fit and be the good girl like I read about in the obits: productive career, happily married 57 years, sincerely church-going. Maybe I’ll avoid my family’s disdain. Avoid my husband’s anger. My husband’s family’s disapproval. Maybe if I stay pretzeled over and silent enough, I’ll even hold on to their bit of love and won’t get hurt.

It doesn’t work--they all suspect, and punish me sorely anyway. My sincere inhabiting of the assigned role has not even kept me safe, much less loved. How can anyone love me if I don’t let them know me? Sacriligous psychic tortoise-lover that I am.

Well, I’m climbing out while I can still walk away, before I chop and trim myself to an early grave. (The coffin for sure will fit all when their times come anyway.)

I’m climbing out before I convince my sons and nieces and nephews that humble accomodation without dignity, without awareness, is the way to live.

I have a lot to learn about anger. I have a lot to learn about being honest. I have a lot to learn about coming out.

I’ve been so scared of losing my scraps of love. Maybe no one will love me. But it’s not me that they love now anyway.