Finger Nails & Perfection?
I bite my fingers nails, at least most of the time. I have done this since I was a fairly young kid. It has nothing to do with any sort of nervous habit. One could say, based on when I am most apt to do it, that it is probably more associated with boredom. For instance, when driving a long distance is one of the times it most likely to occur.
Putting that aside for a short moment, in the last few years I have gone through a couple of year long stretches where I did not engage in the activity of keeping my nails self trimmed with my teeth. It is one those things that requires a good deal of will power on my part to keep from doing. Oddly I will will start with a couple of nails and work my way up, but even after that I will constantly catch myself just about to do it or even pushing the cuticle back with my teeth or some such.
What I came to realize sometime ago though from my own perspective that part of this whole habit is in the search from perfection. I let a nail grow out just a little bit and it has a slight ragged edge or perhaps even the thickness is a bit off from one side to the other, which is something easily noticed when checking it closely and with the feeling in ones mouth. So, a little nip here with the tooth and another one there and it should all be perfect. Except it is not. As much practice over the years that I have had, there will most always be a bit of inequality in my self done trim somewhere. So it leads to another nibble here and and there. Pretty soon I am down to the point of there is no more to take off and I am still less that pleased with the result.
Of course a conversation that my housemate I had sometime ago, like maybe a year or more, had me really wondering. The suggestion was that this kind of activity and the seeking for perfection was maybe the same kind of approach that some one who cuts themselves has in mind. I can almost see how that may be the case and I can certainly take it a step further, because often time in my seeking for perfection I will bite a nail down to the very quick and even sometimes cause myself a bit of pain. I kind of think that the person who is cutting themselves is seeking that pain as the reason for doing the cutting, but maybe it is just a side effect of the act. Maybe the actual act is in some seeking a more perfect them. Maybe that is through cutting away something, even symbolic, that they do not like. Maybe it is through the cutting and making a scar that they find a more beautiful them? Or maybe that instant of the cut, just like the biting of my nails, it seems like the thing to do, but more and more is required to every find the perfection, until it just has to be lived with and achievement of that perfection is not going to occur.
Anyway, as the housemate suggested, if not for my biting of my finger nails and having that one minor release, maybe I would be someone who cut myself or worse instead. Really can get one thinking about things, perhaps at a level that is a bit to deep sometimes. Anyway as a quick update, I went most of last winter and into the spring without really biting but one finger nail. Somewhere over the summer I lapsed on that, but I am back to having a couple of nails that not bitten and maybe soonish I will get that will power and more importantly the think before I bite mindset back completely.
November 8th, 2009 at 7:07 am
Interesting…I am a nail-biter. Twenty-five years ago, I successfully suppressed the habit so that I would have long nails for my wedding. Afterwards, I went right back to chewing my nails down to the quick. A few years ago, still having the desire to have pretty nails, I had acrylic nails put on. The “fake” nails are too hard to bite…so…problem solved! I have had kids ask me, “Are those nails yours?” to which I reply, “Yes, they are real…I paid for them!” LOL