300(ish) Words on Being an American Picker
I’m a picker. I pick my chronically dry lips. I pick at my nails, then bite my nails a bit to get a better angle…to pick them off cleanly. I find gross reminders of myself in the places where I’m alone in my truest form or feeling mild-level stress: around my seat in the car, littered under my keyboard at work, the lip of my bathroom sink, and swept behind the couch as I do my fifth rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In an attempt to curb my need to pick and bite, I intermittently get gel manicures. My detritus is admittedly cute: crescent-shaped and dipped in shades of pinks, nudes, browns. And yes, as a Libra, I’m calling my sheddings “cute”.
I was abroad recently, and my anxiety was at an all-time high while I walked around museums filled to the brim with other human bodies. There was something satisfying my buzzing mind by leaving a trail of my gels, pieces of myself. They’ll be largely undisrupted or swept away, left amongst the most admired treasures of all time.
I shuffled around horrified, picking at my scalp because I saw an adult woman reach out and touch an ancient Egyptian artifact, a stone tablet with hieroglyphs in the Louvre. I gasped for air as separate groups of high school art classes flanked me from both sides. I yanked at a loose thread on my sweater and unraveled part of my sleeve by a few centimeters. I took a selfie in front of the Mona Lisa after I picked the gels off my pinky and ring fingers and scattered them while I was surrounded by eager onlookers. They’ve been swept away and will rest with the famous smile forever.
I don’t see myself ever ending this habit. I’m a monster for paying $35 to get my nails shellacked into oblivion, when truthfully, I know I’m going to chisel away at them within 10-14 days. Maybe I’ll accept the part of me that carelessly spreads myself around in unknown situations because I’m messy, yet territorial. I hope the dried bit I picked off my lower lip drifts from the Jenny Holzer exhibition at Tate Modern down to hang with a Joan Miró painting.
Colleen is a writer and Sailor Mars-reincarnate based in the heart of the gorgeous trash pile, Los Angeles. You can find her on Twitter here.
October 22, 2019
In "Features"
October 19, 2018
In "Features"
