Changing My Ways

It’s not easy being a big time procrastinator with OCD tendencies. I have somewhat improved procrastination-wise (meaning I’ve been procrastinating less, not better) but I need to work on reducing my OCD quirks. Sure, they comes in handy at times (when I apply them to important things, e.g. work) but I find that I tend to obsess way too much on relatively unimportant things. Like my nails.

I have always really liked nail polish and everything nail-care related. When I was little, my mom and I shared one bottle of a certain shade of metallic pink (much shinier than matte pink). When we ran out, or when the polish lost its fluidity, we bought a new bottle of a different shade of pink. One of my aunts–my father’s younger sister–had herself a box full of pinks, reds, silvers and golds–the glittery silvers and golds, my favorite back then! I turned 12, and by then I had more than just one bottle of nail polish, and more than just pinks; I had pearl-white polish!

One day, I was writing–or coloring–with a black marker when some of it accidentally ended up on one of my certain-shade-of-pink colored nails. As I washed it off, I noticed that it left behind a beautiful cobalt blue. So, I did what any girl would do: I colored every millimeter of every nail with my black marker. After about five minutes, hopeful, I headed for the sink. You should have seen my face–or better yet, my nails! They were shining a wonderful blue and I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait until I saw my best friend the next morning!

Blue nail polish wasn’t en vogue yet at that time, so everyone looked at my nails–and thought I was crazy. My best friend, dying to sport the same shade, took my marker and colored her pink nails the same way I did mine. It didn’t work. That is when I discovered that it wasn’t the marker but the polish that did the trick.

That summer, or the summer after that summer, I went to California and visited my five older cousins who owned a nail salon. Knowing that I loved nail polish, they sent me home with twenty six different colors of polish. TWENTY SIX. I had blues, purples, browns, reds, pinks, golds–I was in heaven. I kept my nails long, neat, and a different color every few days. Never did I let the color chip beyond the very edge of my nails!

Then, something horrible happened. My nails became yellow and bumpy, “because of all that nail polish,” said my mom. So I let my nails breathe for a while, threw out all that polish (it was almost all gone anyway), and everything returned to normal. I subsequently calmed down and stopped using polish for a while. And then I moved to the States.

I still paint my nails on occasion, and I always have five basic colors: clear, black, white, a dark red/crimson, and a barely-there pink/beige. Some time last week, I painted my nails red. “Bus Stop Crimson,” to be more specific. For the first time EVER, I’m going to let the polish chip. As a matter of fact, I’ve already let it chip; not a whole lot, but a tiny bit around the edge–which has always been enough to make me take it off entirely. This time, I’m letting it chip beyond that but not until there’s only half of it left on each nail, because that’s gross and tacky. I’ll let one fourth of it chip away.