A New Milestone

I've reached a new milestone with my nails this month: new length record.  I started this blog one year ago because I was sick of having short ugly nails.  Nails that I would hide by always having my hands in lose fists.  Nails I would try to grow out with acrylics.  Nails that I were ashamed of.  Now I seriously cannot believe that my own natural nails are this long.

Last November I shared a "then and now" comparison shot of my nails.  The difference was startling to me.  I'd never had nails that went past the tips of my fingers before. And now...eight out of ten nails do.  It's astounding.

Today my nails look like this:

Right Hand*

Left Hand

To give you an idea of just how far I've really come, here is a progress collage:

I intended to do an update in January but lost track of time.  My nails are longer now, but I fear my left hand will always have stumpy nails.  This is just my theory, but these progress pictures are starting to offer compelling evidence that I'm going to have quite the struggle growing out two of the nails on my left hand: my middle and ring finger.

So why do I usually post pictures using my right hand as my model?  I'm not left handed, my nail art almost always looks better on my left hand than my right, but my left hand has problems from my nail biting days.  On my middle and ring finger of my left hand, the nail detaches from the nail bed on the side closest to my thumb.  The side closest to my thumb was always the area that sustained the most biting trauma based on its proximity to me, and my left was often subjected to more abuse because my right hand would be holding a pencil or mouse (and therefore spared from frequent biting).  The technical term for a nail detaching from the nail plate is called onycholysis and it's quite the bummer.  I always get tears at these corners and eventually what little growth I have will rip off.  I cannot count on my left hand being at a stable enough length to take pictures of, or even to match my right hand.  This month I found a product that has allowed me to grow my nails to this length and without this product my middle and ring finger would be as short as they are in the January picture.  The product is called ibd Brush-On Gel Resin and my review of the product will be coming soon.

I love that I have nails I never thought I'd have.  Trying to stop biting after a quarter of a century of doing it was not, is not, an easy task.  I still sometimes find myself engaging in bad habits but these instances are few and far between at this point.  To anyone out there who does struggle with nail biting: don't give up.  I've only been blogging for a year but I've been actively trying to quit for the last two and a half years.  Don't give up.

*I couldn't quite get the angle right to show off my true nail length; a fault of trying to fit my thumb into the photo.  To more accurately see the length of my nails check out this manicure.