Mumblings of a Nail-Biter

My nails are as long as they are wide, pink around every edge, and surrounded by calluses and red spots demonstrating my unwillingness to leave them alone. They're in awful shape. The tips - whatever's left of them - sport a more jagged outline than the coast of Maine. My thumbs are the worst. Looking at them from the side reveals a railroad track pattern of bumps and ridges caused by years of abuse at the cuticles. I'm not sure they'll ever grow back normally, but it honestly doesn't bug me much. I've bitten my nails since I had teeth to bite with. My parents would paint my nails with bitter nail polish in an effort to curb the habit, but I'd chew them anyway, sobbing away the whole time. I'm guessing I was too undeveloped to connect taste to source, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was completely aware either. I still try the bitter polish now and then, but I get bored with the effort, and it only takes a month for the taste to wear away.

I usually try to stop biting them not because it's something I want, but because the peer pressure gets a little annoying, and putting a bit of effort towards it usually helps for at least a few weeks. My boyfriend morphs into a disappointed parent when he notices me picking at them, and has no qualms about grabbing my wrists and holding my hands securely in my lap for an entire conversation.

Lately I've decided to give it another try. Winter is always a big inspiration; not that it's usually enough to stop me for long, but being blessed with impossibly sensitive skin doesn't make for very sturdy fingertips in the first place. It only takes one boring afternoon for my fingers to be down to the point of pain, and painful, band-aided fingertips don't make for easy typing, writing, or really anything. Starting a new job is also good motivation: I began working in a school earlier this year, and I've found myself hiding my hands and feeling a bit nervous to shake hands with my new colleagues.

I know it isn't the healthiest habit anyone's ever had anyway. Obviously not the least healthy, but I think the word 'habit' usually carries bad connotations. I don't think of brushing my teeth, showering or eating as habits, just habitual. Chewing the tops off pen caps is a habit. Grossly overeating is a habit. Heroin is a habit. Afterall habits are usually just light words for addiction: if there weren't addiction involved it wouldn't stick. Habits and addictions alike are created because they inspire security, despite the destructiveness that comes in tow. I'm sure keeping up with my habit for the past twenty-three years hasn't helped me leave the security blanket at home so to speak. And aside from all that, there's the whole 'eating all the microscopic goodies I touch' thing, and working with first graders is like walking through a germ lab without the HAZMAT suit. Just thinking of all the possibilities is enough to inspire hypochondria. I've only had two and a half weeks of routine-interrupting sickness this school year, which is a miracle considering my unique and chronic exposure.

It might be easier if I weren't impossibly stubborn either. I'll stop for a while, for one reason or another, but when I feel like I've satisfied the needs of who or whatever I stopped for I'll pick it back up. If for one moment I feel forced into stopping, I'll chew my nails off in spite.

Fundamentally it sounds no different than being a pen cap chewer or a smoker. I could have mentioned any other habit and the story would have read the same. It might not have the added bonus of nicotine, but there are other chemical addictions to speak of. Putting it that way makes it sound like my aversion to quitting isn't such a personal decision, more of a forced inclination. Either way, the state of my hands has become a defining feature, nodding at my personality and even taste of fashion. I almost want to say it's given me a bit of character too, like being left-handed in a group of righties, with a slight macabre overtone.

But it's not like I'm on heroin.