Fingernails

Abby Harvey

Content warning: themes of mental illness, explicit blood and skin picking, brief mention of self-harm

I can’t remember a time when my nails haven’t been bitten down to the cuticle, jagged and sore. Our family photo albums have picture after picture of my tiny fist in my mouth; a mirror image of my dad. He’s been biting his nails for as long as I can remember. I suppose I was doomed to have this habit before I was born. I’m not sure if that makes it hereditary, or if there’s something to be drawn from children copying their parents’ habits. There’s a photo of us centre-page, watching ‘The Wiggles’, fingers between lips. I can’t see any anxiety on his face, but the feeling is familiar.

I don’t know what it’s like to have fingernails that aren’t constantly bloody and tender. No amount of reflection can unblur the lines of whether this constitutes self-soothing or harm. I missed girlhood rites of passage; sitting alone at the kitchen bench while I waited for my friends to finish painting their nails. I once coated mine in iridescent purple, the oozing polish stung as it seeped into my broken skin. None of the other girls had that problem.

At times, I can’t help but gnaw and pick and bite until I can’t feel anything but my pulse thrumming in my fingertips. Every thought takes centre stage, and my only reprieve has become reflexive. My feelings are reduced to this silent, dull throb, settling in the most isolated parts of my body. When I struggle to type because every push of a key sends a shooting pain right back up into my hands, I resent the strength of my heart. When the tenderness gets too much. When I find that I can’t hold my toothbrush, turn my steering wheel, or squeeze my lover’s hand.

I can only hope that he doesn’t pin my hesitance on anything but my weeping fingernails. I sit against him, my hands tucked between my knees and the couch, horrifically embarrassed. Hoping he won’t catch a glimpse of the pain I’ve caused myself, of the concave cuticles, dented from searching teeth. I want to run my hands through his hair, to twist every black curl between the pads of my finger and thumb. But I’m afraid that if my hands aren’t contained, my self-destructive anxiety will melt into his skin. I hope that my words hold him, in the way that my hands want to, but won’t allow. I can almost see them brushing against his chin, trailing down his shirt and slotting between his own perfectly fine fingers.

Sometimes I wish my heart wasn’t so full. That I was somehow able to avoid this constant, anxious pain, spanning almost two decades. I imagine going back in time and clasping my own chubby fists shut, whispering that the ache in our chest is not all we are. Even then, I know it won’t stop the blood from my veins pouring out of my bruised fingernails, as it has since I was first able to move my hands to my lips.