I chew my fingernails. I do more than chew my fingernails; in fact, I chew back the skin, peel it backwards, much in the same fashion as you would de-skin the cap of a field mushroom. I continue until the skin breaks off, or begins to hurt. Many times it bleeds. It usually stings.
I repeat this exercise on nearly all of the remaining digits; especially my pointer fingers.
I then wait a few days for the skin to regenerate, to heal.
And I begin again.
I have done this all my life. Since before I can remember starting.
Childhood memories surrounding the practice always contain large adult figures looming over me with disapproval in their eyes; my grandmother especially would make pained faces at me if she spied me sitting in a corner with my hands in my mouth. You will deform your fingers. I was told. It looks awful.
And it does, I know.
It’s like a need and that need, my friends, is strong. I suspect it’s more than habit, than a compulsion; that it is linked to my coping mechanisms surrounding the anxiety that bubbles away inside. Some people bend over rosaries, run their fingers over any assortment of worry beads or stones. I use my fingers. Disgusting, but there you have it.
The only times I have not chewed my fingernails have been in the latter stages of pregnancy and the few months post-partum. Why not then, I wonder? When your life is full of stress, and if not stress then load? In part it was those pregnancy hormones, and pregnancy brain, which enabled me to walk around in a fog (read: stupor) for that little while. I didn’t feel the need. Those same hormones made my nails grow quickly, and strong, and for the first time I held out my hands at a distance and thought these do not belong to me.
After birth, I had no time to chew fingernails. I had a babe at the breast, or in my arms, constantly. Then the hormones drained away, the nails got brittle, began snagging on clothes, and for the first time in my life I had reason to get rid of them, before they harmed my children.
(Ironic, because Riley fell onto my foot when he was a babe and took out a chunk off his nose thanks to my sharp toenails. Stellar parenting there.)
I don’t know if I’ll ever stop. I suppose I even hope I’ll be a cautionary tale to my children: Doesn’t mum’s nails look ugly? You start chewing and you’ll look the same so beware! Keira has lovely nails, has never even bitten them.
Yet she still sucks her thumb.
Maybe we’re trapped in the oral stage together.
It’s been said that “oral fixations are considered to contribute to over-eating, being overly talkative, smoking addictions, overindulging in sugar, chewing on straws and toothpicks, and even alcoholism.”
Wow. I bet that describes a good part of the human race.
Maybe in a little way we’re all trapped together.
