It’s very easy to project our negative feelings about ourselves onto other people; this is something women seem to do best. It’s very easy to point a finger and let the blame for our inadequacies fall elsewhere but at the end of the day how does that help your growth as a woman? Too often these insecurities pop up as jealousy. You know how you can’t stand that one girl because she has naturally long nails that are always perfectly manicured? You tell yourself that that bitch probably ain’t never washed a dish in her life or much less kept a sparkling clean house like you do! Oh, wait that’s what I told myself for years when I saw that hoe.
That mentality right there is WEAK yet, it is mentality that I know most, if not all women are capable of at one time or another. I’ll be the first to admit to y’all that I am flawed and working on it. As I sit here typing this post up with my naturally long manicured nails hitting the keys I think about how simple personal growth can be. In 33 and a half years of life I never really cared dared to grow my nails long*. For all those years, I assumed that women with long nails were some sort of woman that I wasn’t. Why did I assume those things? I did that because I was taking my own feelings of insecurity and projecting them as negative qualities in other women because I did not believe I too could have what they had. In all honesty, I was jealous and hated!
I’ve told you that last year was one of the lowest years for me in regards to personal growth. As I sat there eyeball deep in the Porta-Potty of life with a faint view of the powerful, beautiful woman I once considered myself to be I realized it wasn’t about anyone but me. It took me a long time to clean myself off, get the scent of failure off me and to start moving forward again. Alone. The ugliest thing any woman can do is not realize that she is an all powerful being capable of creating the life she wants for herself. I was a very ugly woman at the end of 2009 but I was determined to reclaim my power and beauty.
I spent the first six months of this year doing many things that I hadn’t built the courage to do in previous years. Then one day in June, I decided to do something I had never done in my entire life…I began to grow my nails out. On this June day, growing my nails had nothing to do with seeing anyone with particularly long nails or anything like that. I just woke up that day and thought I want long nails. Then I had a ton of negative thoughts: your nails won’t grow, your nails will break, your nails are brittle, it will take forever, you can’t do your motherly cleaning duties with long nails and don’t you KNOW you aren’t one of those long nail manicured hands women! I asked myself why I wasn’t “one of those women” and when I got no answer I did what was best. I told myself to shut the fuck up and I took the first step towards becoming…I thought I will have long nails and never looked back.
Today, a few months and two broken nails later…my nails are long, strong and all mine. This really isn’t about my nails though, it’s about looking inside when negative feelings towards others pop up and deciphering if those negative emotions have more to do with you than them? When Jealousy rears its ugly head…look in the mirror, follow that negative emotion and see where within you it takes you. More often than not jealousy is nothing more than an alert that there is room for you to grow.
Today, I realize that the woman with naturally long, manicured nails is just as much me as the woman with short nails who thinks she can’t have long nails…either way this woman can scrub one mean toilet!
*In defense of my femininity, I’d like to add that I did work in the Operating Room for ten years where long nails were not allowed.
