When I was in fourth grade, Mom told me that it takes twenty-one days to make a habit. To break a habit, too. I had just run into the kitchen after school, sobbing that all the other girls in my class had formed something called the “Sparkle Club” and wouldn’t let me join.
Tears mixed with snot on my face as I held my hands out to Mom.
“I can’t wear nail polish!” I moaned. “So I’m not allowed to be a member!”
“Wait, what?” Mom put down the orange she was peeling and wiped her hands on her pants. I remember how the room smelled all citrusy. How Mom’s eyes were so soft, focused right on me. “Why can’t you wear nail polish? And what does that have to do with sparkles?”
“I bite my nails!” I waved my hands in her face again. “See?”
Mom looked. Not that she needed to. I had bitten my nails for ages by then. Mom and Dad had tried all the tactics, too. They made me wear mittens during the day. They painted on that special polish that tasted all bitter and disgusting whenever it passed my lips. Mom even showed me some article about one girl who’d bitten her nails for so long that a massive nail ball formed in her stomach and got her sick.
(Now that was disgusting.)
I still couldn’t stop, though. That’s the thing about habits—you might decide to be super-duper vigilant, but then you start watching TV or paying attention to your teacher in class and all of a sudden your hands are in your mouth and five minutes later your nails have totally disappeared.
Abracadabra! Nails be gone!
Sparkle Club be gone, too.
I sobbed out the whole story to Mom. How Abby McMahon with her flippy hair and Camille Henderson with her flouncy walk had chosen a bunch of other girls from our grade to be in their club. How they all bought matching sparkly ballet flats and sparkly cat ear headbands. How they had to wear sparkly nail polish every day.
It was a requirement, Rule #3 in The Sparkle Club Handbook.
“Camille always wears gold glitter polish and Abby’s nails are multicolored, each one a different color of the rainbow!” I imagined all the Sparkle Club girls having a sleepover together, eating pizza and making ice cream sundaes and painting each other’s nails.
“Their nails are all long and perfect. But mine are stubby and gross. When Camille saw them, she laughed.” I sniffled. “Abby said that polish would look dumb on me.”
“Okay, okay.” Mom rubbed her hand in small circles on my back. My breath caught in my throat, then slowed as I nestled into her hug. I was nine then, and even though some people probably would have said I was too old for hugs, I still snuggled into Mom whenever I was upset. At night, too, when we read chapters of Harry Potter to each other. I think part of me is afraid that hugs are like fairies—that once you stop believing in them, they’ll be gone forever.
Mom finally pulled back and looked into my eyes. “You can wear nail polish whatever your nails look like, you know. No matter what a few mean girls say.”
“I know.” I just-in-time stopped myself from bringing my fingers to my mouth. “But wearing nail polish would just call attention to these … these … ugly nubs. It would make them look worse than they already do. Everyone would make fun of me even more.”
Mom didn’t assure me that everyone wouldn’t make fun of me.
She didn’t give me a lecture about mean girls and how awful they are. (Well, not a long lecture, at least.)
She didn’t even try to convince me that my hands didn’t look that awful.
Because Mom knew the truth: that in middle school, even a few kids making fun of you is the equivalent of the whole world falling apart. She also saw that my nails did look awful, all jagged and barely there. She could sense that, deep down, maybe I needed to figure out the solution for myself.
So instead, Mom told me about habits.
That our brain gets used to responding to situations in certain ways. That once habits are established, your response can become automatic. Which means that when I get nervous or bored, my brain tells me to bite my fingernails. So all of a sudden—BOOM!—my fingernails are in my mouth without me even realizing it.
Mom also told me that if I put in effort to change my behavior, to resist my brain’s message and replace it with a new habit, then my brain could change the pathway it automatically goes down.
But it can take time, at least twenty-one days for most people.
So I tried.
I waited.
I tapped my pencil and twirled my hair and sat on my hands instead.
I bit my nails a whole bunch, but eventually the urge to gnaw on them wasn’t as strong.
Eventually, I grew them out.
And as of this very day, I haven’t bitten my fingernails in eight hundred and three days. That’s a really long time. I’ve kept my nails grown out for more than two whole years.
I’ve grown in a lot of other ways, too.
I’ve grown more than three whole inches, almost as tall as Mom.
I’ve grown my hair halfway down my back.
I’ve worn all kinds of nail polish. I’ve done neon colors and sparkly polishes and even those cute little decals that look like paw prints.
I joined and quit the Sparkle Club. It turns out that Camille and Abby are super mean and I really don’t want to be friends with them. (That’s called personal growth.)
Not biting my nails was hard at first, but I managed to stop myself. Because I wanted to wear that nail polish more than I wanted to keep that old dumb habit.
I kept my fingers out of my mouth. I kept my nails strong. I was strong.
Could Mom be strong, too?