Picture of a girl

I got my nails painted tonight in a color that is supremely reminiscent to the color they were when I went to my Senior year prom. This was fairly unintentional on my part, but the more I look at the color, the more I think about it. That prom was the first time I ever got my nails professionally "done." I remember the woman on the other side of the bench tsking as she surveyed my bitten-to-the-quick fingernails. Which is exactly what happened when I started going for regular manicures last month. Consider it sort of a New Year's Resolution (if I did those) that I don't want to have my fingers covered with band-aids anymore because I've picked my cuticles completely off. Also because I've got a little extra income coming in from working at Curves, and I want to use some of that in selfish ways that are purely focused on myself. Okay, so I'm using almost 100% of it in selfish ways focused on myself, and the manicures are just one slice of that pie chart.

I spent a lot of my formative years (see: high school and part of college) fighting to differentiate myself from the "norm." I wasn't that girl.

I wouldn't tell people until I knew I could really trust them (which, for me, is a process that could take years) that one of the first CDs I ever owned was Shania Twain or that I actually liked the movie Legally Blonde. Those were things I never told anybody about, because somehow in my mind they defied the image of myself that I had built up as this tough, sassy, queer chick who sweated along with the men on summer crew and fucked on the first date if she felt like it. I saw it as two completely different sides of myself, and it was damaging to admit those other preferences. They were going to tarnish my reputation or some such bullshit.

As difficult as it was to come out as "different," it was an entirely more difficult process to re-acknowledge the "mainstream" parts of myself after I had the whole "being different" thing settled.

I've reached a stage now where I'm pretty unapologetic about myself regardless of what aspect of myself I'm talking about. It's stopped being a contradictory thing that I feel like I have to excuse or somehow apologize for. "Oh, yeah, I get my nails done on a regular basis but I also really like eating bacon cheeseburgers." As if those two things are somehow mutually exclusive, and liking one makes it completely impossible for me to like the other.