Bitten Up

I am a nail biter. Thumbs, pointers, middles, rings, pinkies. When I dollop them with fresh icky tasting anti-bite nail solution, I chew at the skin and tissues around them, usually, eventually, inevitably busting through. When those are painted over or bitten raw, I pick with my fingers. Or bite my lip, crack a knuckle, or, yes, even go rummaging in my nasal cavity. As I’ve drafted these last fifty words, I’ve cycled through all these motions (some twice or thrice) without much thought, even as I attempt to describe them with awareness and clarity.  

My hands have been in or around my mouth for as long as I’ve been conscious enough to remember; in public, in private, at home, at work, at school, at schul, on dates, lifting weights, highway lanes and aeroplanes, in a box, with a fox, with Sam I Am eating green eggs and ham. I’ve tried the remedies: Polishes, latex gloves, gum, deep pockets, fidgeting tools, incentivizing others to yell at me, even thinking to invent my own line of specialized fingernail condoms. To a sustainable, impactful degree, none have stuck. 

I could say I feel bad, but my actions say otherwise. The longer it's been drilled into me, the more it’s become a kind of joke, just another quirk of my complicated personage. Chalk it up to womb-developed oral fixation and send Freud the bill of blame. My parents and I have established a sort of Abbott and Costello routine about it—them seeing me nibble, expressing their continued, decades-long chagrin, me reminding them it’s still a better addiction than alcohol, cigarettes or heroin. It’s a real crowd pleaser.  

I recognize biting is something I could benefit from ending, but I’ve learned to know that nail biting (even as hard as I can chomp) will never hurt me so deeply I’ll never recover, or turn into a version of myself I don’t recognize. Shave them down, and they’ll miraculously find a way to return. And as I don’t have the intent to become a hand model (unless it’s for some line of wedding rings from the black lagoon), there’s no real direct hinderance between my goals and bludgeoned (nail)beds. In fact, I’d say the strength of how I’ve maintained the habit has fashioned it into an integral part of how I process, work and live.  

When I’ve had the time to slow down and remain aware, I notice my nail gnawing is at its worst when my body is still, but my brain is subjected to motion, momentum, focus and determination. Watching a movie, sitting in a car, taking a test. My physical energy is bound, but my mind is moving too fast to keep it trapped within itself. Of course, this is felt most strongly when I’m writing, the thing I like and feel compelled to do in some fashion for the rest of my days. Fingers to keys, fingers to mouth, thinking, adjusting, fingers back to keys, back to mouth—a perfect looping exhaust pipe blowhole, a divine way of channeling and distilling the immense energy required to complete the effort at hand. When I occasionally tap into what might be called a flow state, I come out the other end with my fingertips reduced to stubs, nail bit shards between my teeth and scattered down my throat, jaw in TMJ limbo.  

But even in the pain and discomfort, I tend to not linger long on the state of my fingers. They’re a means to the end—to the work! To the real stuff! A cuticle is a small price to pay for the joy and upward lift of a completed project or a solid couple hours of words on paper. What’ll get me farther in this world, nice nails or great writing?  

Laying out this inner dialogue displays its inherent issue. It's binary—battered nails are the signal of an intentioned job well done. They've melded to become positively synonymous, and beyond that, reveals a deeper-held belief that one cannot happen without the other.  Biting isn’t a pleasant habit, but it’s the habit behind the habit that’s inflicting the most damage; the tricky narratives we tell ourselves that build the processes that give us a sense of order, control, and stability in a time that appears to have so little. We bind ourselves to arbitrary things, thinking they’ll keep us safe from the storm. We learn to like the smell of our own doo doo, to seek and savor the things that are supposed to make us sick, or at minimum, find it in our hearts to tolerate them. The rituals of long term discomfort are tolerable if they can make the scary feels go away, even for just a little. An addiction to pain in the name of supposed possible prosperity. 

I turn 25 pretty soon. I know this sounds all Brené Brown, but I don’t want or need that much, outside of more self-allowance to figure things out. Or maybe less figuring out what I want, but clearing more congestive inner space to figure things in. That requires paying even closer attention to the ingrained processes I’ve long taken as gospel, and exploring why and how they have come to regulate my mental/emotional homeostasis.   I’ve kept myself from facing nail biting because, yes, it feels good, but also because I figured I’d figure it out once everything else was. As I keep not getting younger, I realize that’s not going to happen. Not soon, and likely not ever. It’s on my hands, and therefore in mine, to prove I can leave the narrative behind and write the same story, even help write better ones in life and on the page. If anything, my little specs of keratin could really use the rest. They deserve that, and it's time I give it to them. 

Granted, my nails are not the key to all my life’s problems. No doubt it would be great to peel stickers off fruit with regularity, to pry open Swiss army knives with ease, to get leverage underneath a tab of cold soda or untie a wily pair of well-knotted shoelaces. But beyond the practical, it’s a chance to take back a part of me, a brain bit at the mercy of something else. If I can take back one, it’ll prove I can take another and another and another, inching into the self I aspire to be. It might not seem much, but at a nail’s pace, that’s growth.