The curious case of the Unbitten Nails.

I'm a nailbiter from way back. For as long as I can remember I've chewed those suckers right down until there was nothing left but ugly stumpy fingers.

Sometimes I was conscious that I was doing it, other times I would have no idea until I looked, and noticed that yes, I had managed to keep those poor little buggers 'trimmed' right back.
They tried to grow, oh how they tried...and sometimes a millimetre or 2 would spring up while I wasn't looking-making a break for freedom, only to be gnashed back into place with anxiety fueled biting. I wasn't proud of this awful habit, in fact my hands were always permanently curled up to hide my awful looking nails-or lack thereof.

I did manage to grow them for my wedding, it was bloody hard work too and took some serious willpower, it was more the unconscious biting that was hard to keep in check. But I did it, went and got my first ever manicure and they looked long and beautiful and I unashamedly had photos taken of my hand with my wedding rings.
I tried to keep them long after that day, I really did, but a stressful day here and there,an anxious feeling, or a chip in a nail that begged to be 'straightened out' by my teeth, and they were once again a sorry bunch.

I've always been a nervous-habit kind of girl, and for as long as I can remember I've been quite an anxious sort of person too, shy and a chronic worrier.
I worried about what people thought of me all through school, I worried about failing, about not fitting in, about not succeeding. I also worried about dying a lot-about the car/train/plane I was travelling in crashing, that I would almost certainly get skin cancer because I got sunburnt on the weekend, that I would get bitten by a shark while out in the surf.
Even my parents noticed that I was a chronic worrier, and my dad who had been through his own battle with depression and come out with some new outlooks on life- would give me books with titles like 'How to stop worrying' and 'say No without feeling guilty'. (Not feeling I could say 'no' to people when I didn't want to do something came with the territory of worrying about what people thought of me and if I was a nice enough person)

The whole worrying thing hasn't completely ruled my life...but I often feel like maybe I might have taken some more risks without it, maybe played some more team sports without feeling the crippling fear of making a fool of myself or letting the team down, or tried some new things without the fear of getting hurt....I don't know. I think a little bit of fear is healthy, but I feel like my fears held me back from doing things that I may have really enjoyed.And from just being myself.
Things have changed a lot since I met G almost 10 years ago and we've done quite a bit over those 10 years-he's a confident person who doesn't care what anyone else thinks-it's one of the things that first attracted me to him, and I think some of that has definitely rubbed off on me.

But I can still get a bit anxious and fearful, and the nail biting has continued.....UNTIL NOW....
You see a curious thing has happened this year. I'm currently sporting a pair of long healthy looking nails, and I have no idea how it happened. I looked at my nails about a month ago and noticed that the cheeky buggers had managed to sneakily grow a couple of millimetres each without me noticing, and instead of putting them back in their rightful place....I haven't touched them since.
The weird thing is that this SHOULD be one of the most stressful times of my life. My mum has cancer which we're still waiting for results on, and I'm doing fertility treatment which has had all sorts of obstacles over the past few months.....and yet I've somehow curbed a lifelong habit that has gone hand in hand with stress and anxiety...without even knowing it.

I think the point of this whole post is that things feel different this year. Last year I felt pretty angry most of the time, that we had drawn the short straw and were having to go through all of this IF stuff and it just wasn't fair.
This year, even though lets face it- it's been a shit year so far, I feel strangely calm about everything.
Maybe it's because after all of those years of worrying....some of my greatest fears are staring me right in the face- Infertility and Cancer, and I'm realising there's nothing I can do about any of it, that life still goes on, that bad things happen to good people and it's awful but we just have to keep going-there's nothing else we CAN do.
I think my lovely long nails are somehow very symbolic here but I will let my mums own words end this post. When I proudly showed her my nails last week, she looked at me with a big smile and said "look at how far you've come".