Nail-Biting

It usually happens on the side. While reading, while waiting, while thinking, while watching something. The hand wanders to the mouth, the tooth finds the edge, and a piece of you is severed. You often only notice when it hurts — when the skin at the edge of the nail is irritated, when a finger bleeds, when the tip is sensitive to every touch. Then you resolve to stop. And the next day it happens again.

Medically this is called onychophagia. A habit, a behaviour, a nervous matter. Many people did it as children; some never stop. It is so ordinary that hardly anyone takes it seriously as a symptom — and that is precisely why what lies behind it goes unnoticed.