Iron Will... | A 5-minute FreeWrite (nail clippings)

Greetings, everyone

This is my entry to the #freewrite 5-minute exercise hosted by @mariannewest. See details here
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Iron Will...

Andrea was never able to stop biting her nails. Since she could remember she felt an incontrollable urge to bite them. When she was little and flexible, she particularly enjoyed her toe nails. At that time, her parents and relatives saw it as a funny occurrence; but as time passed, her “vice”, as her mother called it, only grew disgusting.

The local curandera thought it was caused by parasites, so Andrea tasted her fair share of purgatives. After two or three days of toilet imprisonment, when she actually delivered some horrible worms, her teeth were back at her fingers day and night until they bled.

After her father’s insistence, Andrea’s mother took her to a doctor. The pediatrician diagnosed a deficiency of iron and vitamin B, so Andrea underwent a strict treatment and diet that made her put on some weight but which did nothing to stop her from biting her nails.

[end of five minutes]
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Her friends made fun of her. They were growing up, showing their big-girl charms and that included their lady hands. Andrea’s still looked like a little girl’s, only shabbier. Her mother tried every disgusting remedy imaginable; from aloe to chicken poop. Jalapeño peppers did the trick for a while, but Andrea found a way to ameliorate the burning with sugar, milk, or honey. Her nails never grew more than a millimeter.

One night, as she was about to turn 15 Andrea resolved that it was about time to stop biting her nails. She was promised a Quinceañera party only if her nails looked like those of a proper lady. She knew there was nothing wrong with her body; she had not been the victim of a brujería either. Whatever spell she was under it was of her own making. She started to think about the source of her craving; the moments when she felt the compulsion to put her finger in her mouth. She framed them all around anticipation, anxiety, fear, or boredom. She concluded she had never been allowed to be her own self. What started as a spontaneous grooming practice developed into a defense mechanism that kept her calling for the right kind of attention, which never came.

A friend of her mother’s once got her a nice shiny nail clipper. She told her that if she cut her nails with that thing, she would lose interest in trying with her own teeth. She was able to let her nails get long enough to inaugurate her fancy present, but then she found herself biting the clippings. There was something artificial and intrusive about the clipper. It was as if her nails were naturally meant to be cut by her teeth. The frequency and extent of that cutting was obviously the issue, but she found the machine unnatural.

She never got her Quinceañera party, of course. 20 years later, she found the solution when she first saw a movie about a certain mutant who could grow metal claws off his hands. It was that or chopping her fingers off. It gave her some consolation that most girls were into implants then. Maybe we were not meant to have full control of our body. Maybe there was nothing wrong with the unnatural, with some artificial enhancement. That’s what superheroes were made of after all.

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6 comments
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that was some story and I knew a few people who couldn't stop nail biting. It is truly compulsive behavior!

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Thank you. I haven't been able to stop doing it; now my wife does it too. It's so frustrating

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I understand. It will take a lot to break it. Indeed, all compulsive behaviors are challenging. Best wishes.

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