My name is Abi and I have a habit. It's not a good one, and it's been giving me grief since I was five years old, but this year I've decided to crack it and with a little help from my beauty-biz friends, I'm doing well. So what is the guilty 'pleasure' I'm trying to give up?
It's chewing and picking at my cuticles. That's the bits of skin around your nails, which for some reason I find inexplicably tasty. It's like a nail-biting habit but worse, because the skin becomes red, looks incredibly ugly, swells up and bleeds - and I can only assume the sole reason I haven't suffered any serious infections is that I've done this for so long that my body's adjusted to having constant open wounds. The low-point for me came when a girl in a dance class refused to hold my hand because she thought I was 'diseased'. So I decided enough was enough and promised myself I'd quit, hopefully helping others out in the process.
If you don't want to see how bad they were, I suggest you don't read on!
At their worst, my fingers look like this (ugh) and my nails are affected too - getting very ridged and bumpy. I didn't paint them for years, let alone let anybody else work on them. But for the past month or so, I've been going 'cold turkey' on the biting. Previous attempts to only bite one hand at a time, or stop before they got to the bleeding stage had failed, as the moment I see a loose bit of skin or nail - off it comes, however painful. So I bit the bullet, and stopped completely.
The first week or so was hell, because this is the 'regrowth period' where new skin appears, resulting in flappy bits that are even uglier than before. The urge to bite them off was almost unbearable, but I fought it off by using my favourite hand cream by Laidbare and by thinking of my forthcomnig manicure at The Lanes in Brighton. After just a few days they'd stopped hurting, and I no longer had to flinch when I got salt of vinegar on my hands - a big improvement even if they still looked grim!
A few weeks on, my fingers look loads better, and I've had plenty of manicures and treatments to get them looking their best. They are still very red and scarred though due to 25 years of chewing, so I will be trying out some products for seriously damaged nails and skin.
Watch this space for updates, and I'd be very interested to hear from you if you also have this miserable habit! I'd love to help others who are as ashamed of their fingers as I've been over the years, and am preparing to be totally honest on what works best.
