I’ve always suspected that I’ve had some sort of oral fixation from early childhood that I never got rid of. In fact, the look and feel of my last pacifier is one of the few memories I have from before the age of five. I’m also from the generation whose doctors were actively discouraging mothers from breastfeeding their children, so whether this is a predisposition or a replacement behavior is kind of up in the air.
Then again, I’m realizing that it goes beyond just fingernails. Looking back at my childhood, it seems like I would bite/chew on just about anything. My pencils (all wood back in those days, dagnabbit) were all ragged pieces of splintery wood before they were sharpened down even halfway, and I specifically remember a set of colored pens with concave rounded caps that I chewed on while I drew, so that by the time I was done with them they all looked like parasols. I even remember gnawing on the plastic earpieces of my glasses until they were jagged enough to scrape the skin behind my ears.
There was more discomfort to be had than that, as well. I bit my nails so much, and pushed the nail bed back so many times, that my fingers never actually bled. I was just left with a raw edge that, once it sits for a while, got really sore. I remember back in the worst times, when I hated having to put my hands in my pockets for any reason, because the tips of my fingers would hurt so badly. You would think that the pain of having my fingernails continuously bitten down to the quick and beyond would deter me, but it didn’t.
Part of the reason, I think, is that I was a nervous kid, which is something that I haven't fully admitted to myself yet. My penchant for daydreaming, along with the fact that my parents moved us to different schools every few years, made me always feel like the "new kid", and also instilled in me the sense that everyone knew what they were doing more than I did. I was also quiet and shy, more likely to sit and read by myself than interact with others. It wasn't that I didn't have friends, but I felt like I knew them less than the other kids knew each other. I felt like I was always playing catch-up, socially. And the fact that I was somewhat ahead in learning (I was one of only three kids who were reading the highest level classroom readers, and in second grade me and one other student studied math separately with the principal) just made me a little more awkward around the other kids.
My parents also had me see a psychologist because I had frequent "stress headaches", so that's another clue to my mindset. So as much as I don't want to pigeonhole myself Freudally, I must have been reverting to my oral fixation stage until it just became habitual. But that doesn't explain what I enjoy about it. There's just something unquantifiably satisfying about chewing something into shape, manipulating it. And I've never fully grown out of the habit of touching things to my lips. They're the most sensitive part of a person's body, so it makes sense to me that in order to fully get the sense of something, you need to press it to your lips. Babies do it constantly, and it seems like it’s carried over into my adult life.
My biting seems to come in phases. I'll bite them all off over the course of a few days, and then not feel the urge to bite them at all for a few weeks. Which is nice when they all grow out at the same rate... I'm usually running at an average of six or seven nails with whites on the tips at one time. But when they start getting a little long, I find myself starting to run them along the edges of my teeth, as if daring myself to bite them. And it doesn't take much... once I get a frayed edge along one of the nails, I find myself trying to trim it, to smooth off that rough edge by biting it. Of course, in the back of my mind I know that's never going to happen. I'm just going to end up with a shorter nail that's still ragged. And when I try to smooth the edges off, the nail's just going to get shorter and shorter until I'm back at the quick again.
It's not that I bite my nails when I'm nervous, though, although I do it more when I am. I also do it when I'm bored, or reading. I don't know why, but slowly nibbling away at my nails while I'm working my way through a book seems like a natural pairing. But as long as I've been doing it, I've also been trying to quit. I remember telling my third grade teacher to give me a heads-up when she noticed that I was doing it, but I wasn't expecting to see the normally-sweet woman glare at me and solemnly ask, "What am I seeing you do?" every time she would catch me. My parents tried to help too... One summer, they said that if I could finish the summer with fingernails they'd give me fifty dollars. That was an *immense* amount of money for me back then, and my brother and I literally spent days debating how we would spend it. I suppose all the intense speculation actually distracted me from biting, because I made it through to the goal date with fingers intact. My parents coughed up the money, I bought an Atari cartridge (as we had decided upon), and I went right back to biting my nails. Even scare tactics didn’t work; my fourth-grade teacher claimed that she knew a woman who had an appendectomy, and the doctors found that the removed gland was full of fingernails she had swallowed. Even back then, I thought this story had a whiff of bull to it, and I now I know that it was a blatant lie. It makes me wonder what else the average elementary teacher just pulls out of their ass.
Appendixes aside, I know there's a health issue here, because constantly putting your fingers in your mouth is a great way to expose yourself to all manner of germs. However, I have never really been a person who spends much of their time being sick. In fact, there have been times in my life when I've actually noticed how little time I've recently spent laid low by illnesses. In this modern world, where people say that the influx of children and adults with allergies is a by-product of our increasingly antibacterial world, I wonder if it’s possible that I've actually strengthened my immune system by exposing myself to so much disease. There's a study to be made there, measuring the relative strength of immune systems in thumb-suckers and nail-biters as compared to the general population.
Right now I'm in a latent phase, where my fingernails all have whites on them. And it's clearly not just because I'm in a low-stress period, either. It's all a matter of knowing my own psychology... I've taken to using an emery board to keep the edges smooth. I've found that when the edges are smooth, I'm much less likely to be tempted to bite them off. So I'm hoping that this time will stick. But I've thought this countless times before, only to find myself a few weeks later, fingertips aching and unable to pick up coins or open Ziploc bags. I suppose I'll be waging this war with myself for a long time to come, although I know how disgusting and unattractive a habit it is. Or maybe I've just got to put enough time between phases that I eventually forget why I do it in the first place.
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