I don't quite know why it started, though I think it partially stemmed from seeing my dad with short nails. His nails have always been kind of short, though not as bad as mine. Or, possibly because as a kid I sucked my thumb a lot longer than was socially acceptable (alone at night, of course). There was one point when I was seven or eight and I was on the verge of growing them out, but I cut one accidentally when peeling potatoes, which then spiraled into picking at all of my nails until they were near nonexistent.
I had a one panel comic - I don't remember the author or where it came from, only that it was always on my cork board - of a girl and her mother looking at one of those Greek statues with the arms missing and the caption stating, "Is this what will happen if I keep biting my nails?" At the beginning of high school, my grandmother tried to make a deal: $100 if I was able to grow my nails out like hers (she had nice long nails) in 6 months. I knew it was bad for my nails, for my teeth, and looked really unpleasant. But I was already set in my ways and needless to say, it failed.
Even though it's a bit blurry, it's still obvious that my nails are really short. My thumb nails were always the most embarrassing.
There were two other times before now when I almost had control of my nail biting problem. The first was two years ago, after I had graduated and had a regular, boring, and thus stress-less job in retail. But then I moved to South Korea, and the combination of trying to find a place to live, training for a teaching position at one of the large hagwons, and then actually preparing and teaching my classes was too much. In two weeks I had undone 5 or 6 months of work. The other time was last October, when again I had almost fully grown out my nails, only to be stressed out with moving to a new apartment while having to deal with communication problems with my real estate agent. Once again, in about a week, I had gone back to square one.
So here I am now, once again, with my nails looking relatively normal. Granted, I'm taking a break from teaching and have nothing to stress me out for the time being. So I'm hoping that this is it; that I will have finally beaten the nail biting beast.
If the nails look bluish, it's from the nail polish I had on earlier.
But I find that it's really hard to fight the urge to bite or pick at them. I wear nail polish to deter myself as well as to protect my nails, but I end up picking it all off within two days. Rough edges or edges that are not as rounded as the rest of the nail really bother me, and I struggle to keep myself from picking at them to try and clean them up. I know that I end up destroying my nails when I'm stressed out, but I don't know how to stop myself. In a month I'm going back to work, and I fear that I'm going to revert back to my old ways once more. How else can I finally end this bad habit?
