"Like this if you hate cancer, support our troops and would suffocate without oxygen."

This is a public service announcement of sorts.

There is a lot of misery in the world. You only have to watch five minutes of BBC News to know that a lot of people are ill, missing or exploded. This is the primary reason that I simply do not watch, listen to or read the news. "You're an ignorant idiot, then." I hear you exclaim! No. I'm not. I'm well aware of the fact that a lot of people, in the history of time, have been ill, missing or exploded. It's happened many times before and it will happen many times again.

What I do not need, is to be reminded of it on a daily basis. Not only is it distracting me from status updates from friends whose lives are more exciting than mine, photos of everyone's dinner and jokes that have been stolen from Reddit, but it is nonsensical misery-mongering at its absolute finest.

"1 Like = 1 Prayer," "Like this to support cancer research," "This person is ill, missing or exploded. Like this if you don't think they deserve it. Ignore it if you love Satan." Firstly, nobody deserves it, whatever "it" is in that particular misery-share du jour.

We are all very well aware that animal cruelty, missing children, babies with brain tumours and disfigured national heroes are terrible tragedies, but a click of your finger is going to do diddly squat besides share the gloom and very mildly inflate your own ego. "That 0.5 second action makes me a good person today. Go me."

No.

What it actually does is make money for the idiots who run the page that the image was shared from. Nine times out of ten, the person in the photograph has absolutely no idea that their face is being plastered all over Facebook for the entire world to cry over. As it turns out, more often than not, our emotions and sense of morality are being manipulated and exploited to score some cash via a process called "like farming." The more likes and shares an image that they post receives, the more exposure their page gets, and the more valuable it becomes to advertisers.

Not only are you ruining everyone's day by drawing their attention to total and utter heartache, but you're feeding the trolls. But GO YOU, right??

So, this year, I have made a vow. Every person who shares one of these bowel cleansing "like this if you have two ears," (No offence, Van Gogh.) "Like this if you know someone who is ill, missing or exploded" or "Cancer sucks, here's a photo of a beautiful woman with no hair." images is going to get removed from my feed. It's as simple as that.

If you want to make any kind of a difference, donate to charity, do a fun run, have a bake sale, help out at a homeless shelter, stop buying puppies from breeders who inbreed their animals and rescue a dog from a shelter... do anything, absolutely anything but share this tripe on Facebook.

Facebook is for posting links to videos of dogs on trampolines, vague statuses about friends who have pissed you off, and photographs of said "friends" passed out and covered in permanent marker penises.

Use it correctly.

"It was a very good year..."

So, I decided that rather than spamming everyone's Facebook feed with recaps of my year, resolutions I won't stick to and the ever so frequently seen "I'm glad to see the back of 2013," type status, I should, instead, sum it all up in a blog so that people can happily ignore it if they feel so inclined.

Firstly, 2013 has had ups and downs, but I'm very happy to report that this year has had many, many more ups than downs. I'll go over the downs first so that I can lighten to mood with the ups afterwards!

THE DOWNS:

The start of this year was a tumultuous time that lacked any kind of direction whatsoever. I was scared and anxious about the future that I was struggling to create for M and I. I was lost. This time last year I received a text message from M's father, with whom I had been separated from for three months, asking me out on a date. I thought it over, and being scared and lonely I decided to say yes, and in truth, we had enjoyed Christmas in each other's company. We laughed a lot and were friends again after a rather unpleasant few months. I visited with Matilda and we had quite a nice weekend together. He secretly planned a trip to Paris for him and I, with the help of my parents, for Valentine's Day. The thought was there, but most of the trip was spent arguing and myself receiving a myriad of odd comments about my jacket, my ears, my face in general, the fact that I am "literally always fucking complaining." We had one more weekend "date" after that before I realised that our efforts were almost entirely pointless. Our friendship declined into nothing after that, and hasn't improved since. I try my best to laugh and joke with him to lighten the atmosphere when we have to see each other at a "handover," but he is unable to reciprocate. He has said himself that it will take him some time to act "normal" around me, but I don't think it will ever happen. The damage is done.

My anxiety has had some of its darker days this year and I was put onto anti depressants... twice, both of which made me infinitely worse.

Fin. Done and dusted. Onto the ups.

THE UPS:

In April of this year, I decided what I wanted to do with myself. I was going to apply to go back into education. Slowly gazing down the list of available courses at the city college, one stood out. A shining beacon in the dark. Hairdressing. I had spent the last 12 years of my life messing about with my own hair, my friends hair, my mothers hair... That was it. That was what I wanted to do. I applied. A few months later I was invited for an interview, and was told on the spot that I would be offered a place. I excitedly called my mother on the bus home and did some squealing and some tearing up. The course has been exactly what I had hoped it would be and more, and it's going incredibly well. I've finally found my calling.

In the Spring I decided to join a dating website. I know, I know... but let's face it, being a single mother with no hobbies that involve other people doesn't make for a particularly thrilling social life. I spoke to a few interesting people who were fun to chat to, but nobody stood out. There were also a couple of total mutters, one of which used "I like the skin on your face" as an opener. I can only assume that he had planned to peel it away from my skull and wear it like a mask to his next birthday party. He didn't get a response. Enter THE BOY. His opening message had nothing to do with my face skin, his desire to "do me up da bum," (no, I'm not joking, I got that one as well. Smooth, I know.) or that I was "smokin' hot lol." Being the first one to actually read my entire bio (and it was long,) he asked me questions, cracked some jokes and (as only the shallow side of me will admit) was very, very cute as a bonus. I read through his profile and realised that he was essentially a male version of myself. Had I not been relatively sound of mind, I would have assumed that I had invented him. I sent a message back as quickly as my fingers would go and spent the next few days checking my inbox every three seconds to see if he had replied. We exchanged numbers after a time and spent almost every night texting back and forth about anything and everything. We discussed meeting, but being that we were four hours apart, we decided not to. I was handed a golden ticket in the form of a toddler-free weekend and invited him to the city for a day out. A huge part of me was scared that we wouldn't live up to each other's expectations because we had managed to grow so close so quickly. The other part of me was worried that we would exceed them. The idea of falling for someone who lives down the road is far more appealing than somebody you would hardly ever get to see. The visit turned into two visits, one after the other. They were two of the most incredibly lovely days I've ever had. While we have managed to exceed said loveliness in days since, I won't ever forget them. We get to see each other fortnightly, and I can safely say that I have never, in my 26 years on this earth, been even half as happy as I am now.

Matilda has continued to surprise me with her awesomeness. She grows and develops every day, and I couldn't be more proud of the person she is becoming.

I am finally getting more of a hold on my anxiety. I won't go into detail as we'll be here all night, but it feels nice.

And now for 2014...

THE RESOLUTIONS:

This year I will not be making 101 vague, sweeping gestures about TRYING to "get healthy" or "exercise" or "cut back on x, y and z." This year I want to make small changes with big impact.

I will smile more and frown less. Ignore more and worry less. Laugh more and shout less.

I will learn to pick my battles and respond to them wisely.

I will breathe more slowly and calmly and sleep more deeply because of it.

I will DRINK MORE WATER.

I will drink LESS things that rot my insides. I'm looking at you, Coca Cola.

I will eat smaller portions. Not for weight loss, but to feel better internally and to avoid hating myself after every meal.

I will go to bed at a reasonable time.

I will enjoy cuddles and playtime and worry less about things being tidy.

I will keep a journal (I'm already on my way with this one, thanks to my delicious new Christmas gadget.) full of the happier parts of my day.

I will finally get a tattoo. Don't worry dad, it will be tiny. Probably.

I will learn to care less about the opinions of people I'll a) never see again and b) don't care to see again.

I will tell Matilda firmly and more frequently that she is wonderful. That she is my best friend. That I love her.

I will learn to make the most of every minute that I get to spend with the boy. There aren't enough of them, just yet.

I will work above and beyond as far as my future career is concerned. THIS, I am going to do right.

I will pretend that the future doesn't exist; stop worrying about the what ifs and appreciate and handle the things that are happening TODAY.

I am going to stand my ground.

Above all, I am going to smile a lot more, because if 2014 is anything like 2013... I'll have many reasons to do so.

Happy New Year to you and your families. *clink*

"And I damn near sh*t myself."

2014 is going to be the year I finally become "zen," you guys. 

For realsies, this time. I hope.

In September I entered my fifth year of Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) which, for those of you "normal" folk out there, is a mental illness that affects the brains ability to distinguish imagined threat from real threat. For example, a normal person will watch an advert for Macmillan Cancer Research and think "Oh, isn't it sad that people go through that?" swiftly followed by "What time is Corrie on again?" I say normal. Anyone in their right mind wouldn't watch that steaming heap of dung if they were paid to do so... but I digress. An anxious person will watch the very same advert and think "OH LORD HELP ME, JESUS/BUDDHA/BATMAN, IT'S A SIGN FROM GOD THAT I'M DYING FROM THAT BACKACHE I HAVE EVEN THOUGH I LIFTED HEAVY BOXES YESTERDAY."

Another example is simply going for a walk of an evening. A normal person will see other people in the street and think nothing of it. An anxious person will mentally play out, in great detail, how that person will mug and/or murder them and that nobody will be around to help them and they will just lay there forever until they become a bloated corpse and vultures will travel from afar to peck their eyes out and nobody will turn up to their funeral because everyone secretly hates them.

It's after these thoughts that their brain decides to put their body into unnecessary fight or flight mode, leaving them feeling shaky, sick, dizzy, exhausted, short of breath and with a heart beat that feels like it's doing the dance moves from Whigfield's 'Saturday Night.' A normal person only goes into fight or flight mode when it's entirely necessary, e.g. when their car has a near miss with an 18-wheeler or when a lion has escaped from the zoo and broken into their house for a bite to eat. An anxious person feels like this 150% OF THE TIME. After a while the body starts to shut itself down and leaves us feeling like an empty, diseased husk, which only serves to make our fears worse, leaving us convinced that we're dying of a myriad of weird and wonderful illnesses, some of which haven't even been discovered yet.

I don't plan to finish my fifth year of this in the same state I'm in now. I have an attack plan of sorts that I'm hoping will kick GAD right in the gonads with impressive force.

Firstly, I will be having a man from the internet hypnotise me on a nightly basis. Now, when I say "hypnotise," I don't mean I'm going to sit up all night watching videos on YouTube of swirling vortexes or a man swinging a pocket watch back and forth. I have acquired an app by a guy named Max Kirsten (his last name is a girls name. I know. Grow up.) and plan on him being my new bed buddy. Basically I listen to him talk at me with whooshing background noises for 40 minutes a night in the hope that he'll rewire my scrambled egg of a brain box, and so far, I'm enjoying it. I wake up from my odd little trance feeling remarkably awesome, although last night he scared the ever loving life out of me. I relayed my experience to my dad this afternoon, and it went something like this:

"So I had a man from the internet hypnotise me last night."

"...I see!"

"Yeah basically I just listen to him talk for 40 minutes while I have a bit of a nap."

"And how was it?"

"Well, the best part about it was that part way through he started talking at me with two voices at once, and it came out of nowhere and I damn near shit myself, which made me jolt, cracked something in my lower back and now my leg doesn't hurt anymore... so that's something. Maybe I should write him a review saying 'I still feel anxious, but thanks for healing my sciatica."

Having only been listening to it for three days, I'm not overly concerned by the lack of progress, but that 40 minutes of peace where I don't consider all the things that could kill me is blissful.

The second part of my attack is to get my gutty works under control. I suffer with IBS which, while it's super fun (it isn't) it's also somewhat of a hindrance to pretty much every aspect of my life as it stands. Eating has become a chore, which I never thought I'd say, and a chore that makes me anxious no less. So, come January 1st I will be eliminating wheat, gluten and lactose. Shortly after this I'll probably kill myself due to abject misery from all of the bland, tasteless food I'll be eating. The only bright side to this is that all of the carrots I'll be ingesting will give me super awesome seeing-in-the-dark capabilities and I can start calling myself Nighteyes. I've already started designing my cape. Thankfully this plan is not a permanent thing. The point is to eliminate certain things for a while, and then reintroduce them one by one and see how quickly it takes for me to poop myself. So, that'll be fun.

The third and final part is to DRINK. WATER. I have a terrible habit of limiting my fluid intake to decaf tea and Coca Cola, and while that was fine at the spritely age of 15 and gave me no real problems, nowadays a morning without water leaves me feeling like the dried up, mummified uterus of a 600 year old nun. 

So that is my plan. I'm sure I'll write a blog in a few weeks about how it's going, by which point I'll be doing it posthumously because of the whole tasteless misery-suicide thing.

We'll see. 

Nighteyes, out.

"Can you see any more poop, or is that the last of it?"

Back at University, my housemates were my entire social world. Every single one of us was a totally different animal from the next.

I was a sort of odd, slightly (and increasingly) overweight hermit with an obsession for World of Warcraft, The Simpsons and drinking coffee out of pint mugs.

Then there was Gio, our "mexican." He was a mohawk-clad, Ecuadorian city hopper who would disappear for days on end and then return in some sort of daze with pupils the size of walnuts. When he came home and we asked him where he'd been, he'd say "...Oslo." He wasn't kidding. This happened often.

Abby was perpetually stoned and once cooked her own finger making potato smileys. She also had extensions "professionally fitted" that left her with a rather interesting bald strip on the back of her head. I cut her hair once and it never grew back. Whenever my hair decides to stop growing for a bit, it's "doing an Abby."

Lisa and I would fight about... everything... but mostly tidying. I was incredibly scruffy back then (not that you'd know it to see my room now - it's gloriously tidy 95% of the time.) and she hated me for it... and I hated her for hating me for it. We fought with vigour and vim and OFTEN. I think it's pretty safe to say that we actively hated each other at times.

She is now my daughter's Godmother and I love her with every fibre of my body.

One day I sought friends, dare I say it, OUTSIDE of my HOUSE. I had been chatting to a few people from the area on Twitter on and off and one day decided to ask one of them out for a drink. His name was Chris and he was skinny and ginger and made me laugh a LOT. We met up in town and after an awkward hug and the usual "Hey how are you? Yeah I'm great. Me too. Cool. Alcohol?" we went to a nearby pub. We sat and chatted about general nonsense, and I quickly realised that his face, like mine, was made of rubber. Not a minute passed without some sort of stupid, contorted expression travelling across one of our faces. It was glorious.

I was a smoker back then (ew, I know, right?) and so being as it was an open fronted pub, I stood outside while he sat inside with the clean people and we continued the nonsense talk. A few minutes in I felt something land on the top of my head. My first instinct was to look up. My second instinct was to, stupidly, touch the top of my head. When I brought my hand back down I noticed a sort of white and green smear that looked remarkably like half digested, stolen chips.

"I'VE BEEN SHIT ON, CHRIS."

"You've been what? OH MY GO-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

"STOP LAUGHING AND PASS ME A TISSUE, YOU BASTARD."

He passed over a tissue and I wiped the bird... uh... "leavings" from my pristinely quaffed (it wasn't) hair, cringing beyond belief and deciding that I probably wouldn't ever call him again. Ever.

"There's still some th-no, the other si-no not there, it's right th-shall I just get it?"

We bonded over him wiping bird shit out of my hair that day, and he has been one of my favourite people in the world ever since.

"Can you see any more poop, or is that the last of it?"

"Well, it's sort of still there. You might want to wash it."

I don't get to speak to him nearly as much as I'd like to, but he is the male me and he does a wonderful Steve Bruce impression, so if you do ever get the chance to go for a beer with him... do.

Just remember to stay inside.

"Nah, I'm alright. I just don't feel very well."

Normally I share my posts via Facebook so that people can read them and hopefully have a chuckle at my bizarre life experiences. This will not be one of those times.

Sometimes I feel desperately sad. It isn't always the gut wrenching, drowning in your own tears type of sad. The vast majority of the time it's a sort of hollow, dragging feeling in my throat that makes me want to sleep for a week.

It happens in uncomfortable and mostly random waves, all triggered out of nowhere by reminders of things that caused the dragging to start in the first place. It appears, for the most part, without warning, and my eyes drift and my mouth pins itself closed and my lungs fill with sour air and my brain feels like it's floating in a pool of water inside my skull. My heart beats quickly and awkwardly in my chest as if it isn't mine, and I feel like my internal organs are missing at times... or as if someone is trying to pull them out of my mouth piece by piece with a long hook.

Trying to explain this to anyone is difficult, at best, and is almost never done for several reasons. One being that the vast majority of people will think I'm either a) exaggerating it, or b) f*cking nuts. The latter probably isn't too far off the mark.

I have had two therapists in my brief stint on this planet. One who, upon filling out a check-list of depression and anxiety inducing life experiences and only leaving 4 out of 15 unchecked, complimented me on my level of general sanity. The other was a calm and quietly spoken gentleman who tried to help me get over past events by making me relive every minor detail of them in his office. He was met, during most sessions, with a blubbering wreck of a person who couldn't form sentences after five minutes.

The very small handful of people who know me best know that these things are something that I relive frequently, and even some of those people don't know what all of those things are. I have to truly love a person to let them into that side of my life. Not to mention the fact that I have to be comfortable in the knowledge that they aren't going to assume that I'm either making it up, or that I'm telling them to evoke some sort of onslaught of sympathy or reassurance. There are certain parts of my past that my own family aren't aware of and that I probably wouldn't tell them about if you held a gun to my head. There is a certain amount of dignity, that a sprinkling of other people have stolen from me in a variety of sadistic ways, that I would at least like to pretend is still in tact to the people who raised me to be the strong, outspoken person whose mask I wear on a day to day basis.

In the company of others I am a ridiculous idiot. I put on silly accents and dance with the rhythm of a pigeon with a missing toe and contort my face into a wide spectrum of unappealing shapes. I think that, for the most part, my ridiculous, idiotic behaviour is an elaborate disguise that I wear to hide the fact that inside I feel a little like I'm rotting. It might also be because it's my way of trying to convince myself that everything is okay, that one day I'll be able to act like this *without* it being used as a coping mechanism.

On my own I am an entirely different animal. I sit in my room and I draw, cry, sew, crochet, sing, cry, write, cry, stare off into space... sleep. I do it all within the confines of my bedroom walls and I do it for no particular reason at all. Nothing vastly horrifying has happened to me for a good few years now, and yet I can't shake the feeling that I'm due a shitstorm of some description; that, just around the corner, is something watching and waiting for me to feel happy and comfortable in the arms of my daughter or my other half, before it strikes me down and I end up back in a pit of abject misery. I have felt this way since the first "incident" when I was 13. 13 is an unlucky number for most, due to the social universe telling them that it should be, but for me it packs a bit more of a punch. For the first 9 years of that period I was right. There was something else brewing and it seemed to be on an 18 month cycle. I'd move on and recover from something and then something else would kick me in the teeth. 2009 was when my brain decided it had had enough and I fell into what my second therapist described as a "textbook mental breakdown." The world and the more sadistic members of its population had chipped so many pieces of me away by that point that I didn't have the emotional capacity to deal with it anymore.

Doctors have given me pills and blank-faced therapists. The people who care about me have tried to understand and give me time, support and love.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I go and lay next to my daughter for a while. I stroke her face and whisper that I love her and she sleeps soundly in my arms... and for a moment, I remember why I'm still going. She is my most treasured gift and she will always be my reason for living. Always.

The best thing I can do for myself now is be happy, and feel safe in the knowledge that I am surrounded by people who want me to get better; and I will, in time. I have no doubt about that. Once I'm able to let go of the things that drag me down and can truly appreciate the things that lift me, I'll get better.

I'm hoping that the thing I can feel waiting for me around the corner is, this time, something good.

"You should probably hide in the footwell."

Growing up as a Middle Eastern "expat brat" makes the ability to do the following things impossible:

- Enjoy British KFC.

- Answer the question "Where are you from?"

- Go out without a coat on even in the middle of Summer.

- Put up with Anti-Islamic bigotry.

- See a white pick-up truck without assuming it's going to cut you off.

- Tell people about your past without it sounding like a pack of steaming lies.

The last point is particularly important in the context of the story I'm about to tell. 

On the 29th of May, 2004, seventeen members of a terrorist group calling themselves 'The Jerusalem Squadron' attacked two oil-industry buildings and a foreign workers' housing complex, The Oasis Compound in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. 

I was at school that day for the dress rehearsal of my GCSE leaving ceremony (OWN CLOTHES DAY, YEAH!) We were all lined up on the stage, our form class tutor directing us, when one of the other teachers hurried into the room looking concerned and whispered something into their ear. We were quickly hurried to what was then deemed to be "The Study Room," (which nobody ever used EVER) and waited. And waited. And then we did some more waiting. Several hours passed before we were informed of what was happening. The head of KS4 entered the room, solemn to the bone, and explained that Oasis compound had been attacked, with several people taken hostage, most of which were either severely injured or dead. 

Back then Oasis was considered a "posh" compound. It was expensive and shiny and the swimming pools were amazing and most importantly it was across the road from mine. I panicked. Knowing that my mama was at home and that my then 11 year old brother was at school within our compound, I felt my heart rise up into my mouth. "Has it spread outside of Oasis?" I asked, not particularly wanting to hear the answer. "We don't know. We know that there are a few members of the terrorist group roaming around  and a couple of oil company buildings have been attacked, but we honestly can't tell you anything else." Thankfully nobody in my tutor group were living on Oasis at the time, but the room went deathly quiet regardless. My father was and still is in the oil industry, and for years we had heard horror stories of Westerners getting blown up, pulled out of cars and shot, attacked in the street... My mind became flooded with unpleasant what-ifs, but all we could do was wait. Our school was on total lockdown, along with several others in the city, and we were expressly told that we weren't allowed to leave until further notice. Not quite understanding the severity of the situation, several other students spent the remainder of the afternoon moaning about how they were bored and mumbling "why can't they just let us leave for God's sake?" We were told that we could have our phones on us for keeping in contact with family and thankfully, a few hours in, mine rang. 

I had never been so happy to hear my dad's voice in my entire life. "Sweetheart, I'm coming to pick you up. Be ready." he said. 

As I walked across our vast and seemingly never-ending school carpark, I noticed that the walls surrounding our school had twice as many security gunmen as usual, and this time... there was a tank. In fact, there were two tanks. I saw my dad's car and ran as fast as I possibly could. His brow was furrowed and he gestured for me to get in. Quickly. My school was almost in the middle of nowhere, and as we were flying down the exit road he turned to me and said "You should probably hide in the footwell." I wasn't quite expecting to hear that, but I ducked down anyway. I watched him for the entirety of the journey home, his eyes flickering left and right as we drove through the deserted streets of our usually busy city. We were the only car on the road for a good 90% of the journey, and I felt like we were in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. 

When we finally arrived at our compound, the security was 10 times what it usually was, and we were held at each checkpoint for 10 minutes while they ran mirrors under our car and checked our identification. After what felt like an eternity we were allowed inside. My mum was sat up in the bedroom watching the ticker updates on any and every news network that we had access to. Some of the hostages were British and as such, it was even on BBC News. And so we sat there, on my parents bed, watching the situation unfold in surround sound as military helicopters passed overhead.

We watched as an enormous helicopter spilled open, men tumbling out of it (and one falling over in quite a spectacular fashion) and I uttered "fucking hell" before realising that, even in situations like this, it probably wasn't cool for me to say the F-word in front of my parents. 

Whenever I have tried to explain that day to anybody, they either look at me like I'm speaking in tongues, or I can see the phrase "what a load of bullshit" forming in their mouths before they decide not to say it. My teenage years were somewhat... interesting, and while certain events were terrifying at the time, the stories make for great ice-breakers. Sort of. 

We still laugh about that guy falling out of the helicopter 9 years on, and I hope we never stop, because life is far too short to take seriously.

"Don't bite your nails - there could be poo particles under there. Gross."

Ladies and gentlemen, I have become a nail dork.

Up until a few months ago, I was a nail biter. It was my go to habit for the times when I was sad, angry, excited, bored, focused, anxious, watching a movie, tired, frustrated, breathing...

It was the physical manifestation of my inner "turmoil," as it were, and I hated it. I spent years of my life with my hands balled up inside my sleeves and, while I wasn't a particularly gross example of a nail biter (think short rather than barely there,) I still felt self conscious of anybody even glancing at my hands. This was only made worse when I was 10 and my uncle decided that it would be really funny to give me a wart. He is only a few years older than me, and so he was more like an annoying but loveable older brother to me. As such, our relationship revolved around him winding me up in one way or another as often as humanly possible. He had a wart on his finger that he used to waft in my direction saying "Look, Laura, you're going to get a wart!" and naturally I would recoil in horror. On one of these occasions he held me down and rubbed it on my hand, laughing himself into a dribbling stupor while I shouted "NO, GROSS, GET OFF YOU HORRIBLE GIT!" He casually stated (through his laughter) that I probably wouldn't get it and not to worry. A few months passed and I noticed a small raised bump forming around my middle finger nail. Putting it down to my skin nibbling habits I brushed it off as nothing and forgot about it. A month later and it was the size of a raisin. It was gross. Had I not been a nail biter, it probably wouldn't have caught and instead of doing the smart thing and showing my parents, which would have likely resulted in a trip to Boots, I hid it. I hid it until every single nail on BOTH hands was surrounded by these disgusting, cauliflower-esque skin demons and I was deserving of the name "Toad Fingers." Thankfully nobody at school picked up on that diamond nickname.

It took about 6 rounds of awful, bright white wart removal potions to kill them off, but by that point the damage was already done. I hated my fingers and continued to hide them inside my sleeves until I hit 16 and realised that Saudi Arabia was too damn HOT to be walking around in a hoodie with my sleeves balled up. 

I didn't like the nail biting habit, but then decided I didn't give a sh*t anymore and that it was my way of coping with my strange, warped little brain. As the years passed and I slipped into a deeper sense of doom and dread it became an hourly occurrence and through no want of trying, I simply couldn't grow them. The second any white tips started to show they were off. 

 My ex used to physically bat my hand out of my mouth every time I went to bite them, even though he was a nail biter himself, and I would glare at him and shout "YOU DAMN DIRTY HYPOCRITE," but it didn't diminish the fact that he found it "really gross." 

Earlier this year I realised what it takes to grow your nails. Contentment. Contentment and a cute boy who makes you laugh a LOT. I didn't need to try... I simply stopped biting them. The happier I became, the longer they got, and the longer they got, the more I liked them. I started frequenting nail art blogs and Instagram accounts and realised "I can do ART... on my NAILS." It was like some sort of divine epiphany... and then the obsession started. I couldn't walk past a Superdrug or a Pharmacy without skipping inside to oggle the pretty colours and make various fireworks display watching noises. "Ooooh... AHHHH... look at the COLOURS... oh, GLITTERY!" 

Collecting nail varnish has become my cheapest and most satisfying addiction to date, and I now have an impressive collection of over 60 different colours. Some glittery, some shimmery, some that look different from one angle to the next, some that crackle, some that look like crocodile skin... It's plain old delicious. My spirit animal, Cousin Simone, gave me a box full of nail polish, tiny jewels, brushes, etc, and once I had little nail art brushes in my possession I was trying a different design every single day. I've had Simpsons nails, Harry Potter nails, zombie nails, Pixar nails, Despicable Me minion nails and some with pretty little flowers on. 

It's my birthday a week Tuesday. Money for nail polish is all I plan to ask for. That and chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate.