It saves, it saves

Ever since I was a tiny toddler, I've been picking at my cuticles. It always felt as if the skin around my nails was itching, so I had to tear it off in big chunks. Whether or not I had issues, is a completely different story which you can read about elsewhere, but whatever the reason was, my fingertips, sometimes even down to the knuckles, were always red from dried blood.

So, what does a girl do? Seeks help, goes to therapy, watch Dr Phil? She does neither. She get's hooked on nailpolish. I think it was Stargazer and it was sold locally, which in retrospect seems rather odd. This small, rather posh village had a beautyshop that had a big stock of old Stargazer polishes. There among the cute shimmery pinks and the nude french manicure polishes, you could find green polish with big chunks of gold glitter. It was like finding Dame Edna next to Tyra Banks, you were knocked off your feet. Before I knew it, I was a 18 year old collecting nailpolishes that were so anti-grunge (this was in 94) my dr Martens wanted to crawl off my feet. Before I knew it, my skin wasn't bleeding anymore. I don't even remember the transition, how it all happened but my guess is I was so bedazzled by the polish that I forgot to massacre my fingers. If the nails were all Joan Collins, the cuticles couldn't be Terror on Elm Street, could they?

I still tend to do that when my head's in the barrel, pick at my cuticles and dig my nails into my skin. Still, at 33.
That is, unless I wear polish. I guess that somewhere deep down I am thinking it's a waste of good polish?

The polish in the picture right is Essie's Jag-U-Are, which has had both me and my kid gasping for air. The color makes me think of the tale of the girl with the ruby red shoes, the color that makes you forget about anything else.