My Name is Rebecca and I am a Nail Biter

I started biting my nails again. After my 25th birthday I quit, but now five months later I'm back to gnawing on these poor little strips of protein because it feels absolutely wonderful. I pick a finger, grab hold of a brittle corner with my teeth and rip off as big a strip as possible. If any white is showing, any white at all, it must be annihilated. Then I look at that undeservedly ravaged finger and fantasize about being a dainty lady with long, strong nail beds and soft in-tact cuticles. I dream about having graceful hands with thin fingers and precisely manicured nails of the "square-round" shape that many sassy gals are sporting these days. If I had beautiful hands like them, I could do anything. It's my hands that are keeping me from following my dreams. My hands. My "Carry Bradshaw" hands. Maybe since we are hand twins I should move to New York and write about men while wearing fun outfits.

My hands have been compared to pickles and old woman hands. Also lizards.

And the thing is, I love rings! I definitely wear them anyway since they're the only type of jewelery I manage not to lose. I can always count on losing one earring and breaking any necklace that comes within two feet of me. But rings hold a special place in my memory and subconscious and they have a specific spot in my jewelery box (next to all the widowed earrings that I'm hopelessly saving should their other halves arise from the dead).

Acrylics are always a temporary solution to this problem, but they torture my natural nails, and it really hurts their feelings that I won't even try to give them a chance and just cover them up with super glue and chemicals. What kind of person just covers up a problem instead of dealing with it? Me. Because I'm such a horrible person, these acrylics have completely ruined my thumb nails, just adding to the unsightly appearance of these hands of mine.

It's as if there are 10 people in my life that I'd like to torture and kill, and my fingers are the voodoo dolls. My thumbs are under no circumstances permitted to have cuticles. They don't deserve them, and when I catch those sneaky thumbs with cuticles, they are gone in seconds flat (and definitely not with care). Who do these thumbs think they are, with their opposable qualities, helping develop my fine motor skills? These arrogant bastards have a bad case of short man syndrome and need to be put in their place, which is why I abuse them the most.

The other eight voodoo dolls don't endure as much abuse, and the pinkies tend to grow the fastest. They're the littlest, though, so I let them get away with it.

Another part of this whole addiction rigmarole, which has left me just absolutely flabbergasted, is that I quit smoking without a hitch. This must support my theory that my fingers represent people in my life that I hate, because you just suck on a cigarette and I certainly wouldn't want to suck on anyone I hate. I guess I just need to figure out who these 10 people are that I hate so deeply and inflict significant pain on them (physical and/or emotional). Then I will be sassy and dainty with enchanting and delicate hands, which will then directly lead to my success.