got vices? i’m okay with it.

“I bite my nails, that’s my one vice” M says.  

I used to bite my nails.  But in my teens I was shamed into stopping.  I had just started modeling and I remember a hair stylist using words like ‘disgusting’ and ‘gross’ when he looked at my hands.  It was clear I was worthless as a model, and perhaps a human being if I kept sticking my fingers in my mouth.  It would take me a shocking number of years (and therapy) to separate myself from professional rejection.

My other oral fixation was smoking but it wasn’t as publicly vilified back then.  Of course I’d seen the pictures of a smoker’s lung looking like a burnt pork chop, but I went ahead and did it anyway.  I had a friend who was an unrepentant smoker and his mantra was “I don’t trust people without  a visible vice.”  I seized on the brilliance of the remark, what clever justification for my habit.  I was copping to my vice while daring detractors to claim they had none.  “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

“It’s my only vice.” M continues, ” I think that’s pretty good.  I’m okay with it.”

I’m almost twice the age of my new nail-biting pal but I recognize now what I was clueless about then.  I was never okay about my vices because I wasn’t okay about me.  I was uncomfortable in my skin.  My chewed up fingernails mirrored my sense of self.  If I thought someone’s opinion or validation mattered I was uncomfortable and insecure labeling myself a smoker in front of them.  I did not challenge them about their hidden vices.

I recognize these vices are nowhere remotely on the same level of the ”bad for you” scale but I wish I had owned them fully.  I wish my forty-something self could have told my twenty-something self,

“Everyone’s got a vice whether it’s visible or not.  No one is perfect. Get rooted in your sense of self.  Be okay with who you are.  Ground yourself  in your convictions, until you meet a resounding argument that sways you.  Be okay with change, change is a constant.”

The taboo of nail-biting probably helped entrench the nicotine habit.  Or maybe not, but I didn’t have the satisfaction of quitting for myself.  Shame may get the job done, but it has a lingering and undermining facet.  I did quit smoking for my own reasons but for so many years I felt bad about it based on my perception of other people’s opinions.  I projected shame.

Today I heard my sixty something self whispering,

“Hey kid, you can only live one day at a time.  Be your best you. If you screw up, be okay with that.  Give it another shot tomorrow.  One day at a time. You’ll be okay.”