friday, july 20, 2001
bye bye nails

there is something going on and i have no idea what it is. all i know is that i am losing my nails. childhood is being revisited and not in a nice way. and i just know if i could get to the bottom of it, i would have nails again, but i am so absolutely clueless it isn't even funny.

when i was a kid i used to bite my nails. i never had nice nails, they were always bitten, ragged and very very short. they'd get a snag and instead of a nail file i'd bite them off. they'd get ragged or rough and i'd chew and chew and chew until they were smoothed down. i tried a few times to stop and never managed it until i was a teenager when i managed to get it down to the times when i was nervous. i started keeping a nail file with me and as long as i wasn't worried, nervous, or frustrated, i'd use the nail file when a snag or some other nail problem came up. and that's the way it stood for years. my nails still weren't pretty, and i never did get the hang of nail polish, but i could say i was biting less and only under pressure.

and then one day i decided i wanted nice nails. not pretty ones since the whole nail polish thing was and has always been beyond me, but nice, neat nails. it took awhile, but i finally overcame my biting habit. well, to a degree, anyway. i still bite under extreme stress, like when saxy and i split up last year (has it really been a year?). but in general i use a nail file and have nice nails, not pretty ones (see the nail polish comments of earlier), but nice. this has worked for me, i am proud to have broken a nasty habit and my nails are nice without getting in the way of all the handsy type stuff i do.

the no-biting has actually only been broken twice since. the first time was when saxy and i were experiencing our problems and they had finally gotten to the point that eggshells on our floor couldn't make it any more tense in this house. it stopped when i threw him out, resurfaced briefly when he came back and then subsided again. it resurfaced again right about the time he lost his job. not quite sure about it, but i do remember him noticing it and asking me about it, thinking he was the cause. i told him he wasn't and the habit disappeared again.

now it's back and i have no idea why. saxy and i are fine, the kids are generally great, there's nothing new financially or personally that i can think of. yet, for about the past 3-4 weeks the biting is back. and back with a vengeance. i have no nails left to bite at this point. and i cannot pinpoint exactly what is going on to bring this problem back up to the surface.

but when you add this to the sleeping and being tired all the time, there is definitely something going on. i just wish it would let me know what it is so i could deal with it and move on.

i'd like to have nice nails again.