Kept

I can’t remember when I started to love nail polish. Maybe high school, right in time for my mother to be assured that I wasn’t a “tom-boy”. I have always enjoyed sports and high intensity activities; I wasn’t missing a nail appointment. Nails use to be a thing to do back in high school. It was all about the designs, the length, and the shape.

When I thought I was making some type of money in my early twenties while working on the upper westside of Manhattan, I’d budget a quick polish change or manicure every week. It used to be me time or just a weekly reset, or so I thought. A few months later, my life would take a tumble and somehow over the years doing my nails would become the part of me that kept me together.

Recently, I thought I was giving my nails a break until a friend thought something was going on with me because it’s unnatural for me to go without polish. That conversation would spark a learning moment that, for once, I am not keeping it together, and I’m actually okay. There’s nothing going on but the rent, school, and maintaining something I believe in. I don’t have to mask behind an appearance that only kept me normal when I was literally falling apart.

This is freeing AF.