Yang Girly Girl

I admit I’m one of those people who don’t have pretty feet.  Does anyone? Well, yes, some do, and they’re mostly men. The baby soft skin that surrounds the unblemished, un-veined, inner profile of the perfect, milk toast foot, gives new meaning to male foot associated appendages.  Believe me, it’s a myth.

 

I’m either too cheap or too embarrassed to get a professional pedicure.  I’d have to get a pedicure before the pedicure, complete with jack-hammer, saw, and an electric sander.  I have an excuse.  I grew up in Southern California, went barefoot regularly, and every callus on my feet has a story to tell about hot sandy beaches, crab grass, and an occasional aluminum can.

 

During the winter, I apply layer after layer of toenail polish, one over the other, because, not only am I too cheap or too embarrassed to get a pedicure, I’m too lazy to even do my own.   So I layer.  Sometimes red, sometimes pink, sometimes gold lame for Christmas, that leads to Leprechaun green around March 17th.  By summer, there are probably at least 10 coats of nail polish on my toes, in one form or the other.

 

Once a year, whether they need it or not, I take off the polish.  It’s always a fun surprise to see what color my toenails are at this point.  It’s usually not attractive, but nevertheless, intriguing.

 

This year’s ritual took approximately an hour.  After soaking my toes in industrial grade turpentine, I checked to make sure I had all ten….and a half.  That’s a bone spur, my adoptee from wearing stilettos all my adult life.  Yes, I will wear them until I can’t.  They make me taller, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single….well, you get it.

 

There they were:  naked toenails.  I hadn’t seen them for months, except this year, there was an anomaly.   The second toenail from the big toe, was blue, and not just any blue, but SMURF blue.  When did I paint my toenails blue?  The rest were sanguine yellow, from months of stain, but not THAT toenail.

 

I touched it gently.  It moved.   I could hear it sigh, “Finally, I can rest, go to the light, release myself from this putrid, petroleum prison.”

 

Okay, that’s a bit dramatic, but I was sincerely appalled.

 

I had a toenail that had died who knows how long ago, adhered to my body by layers and layers of polish.  I didn’t know.

 

I do remember feeling some discomfort from a particularly exhaustive trip to the gym, one where I decided to walk backwards on the treadmill because I was bored.  If you do this, make sure you slow the treadmill down considerably, otherwise you’ll find yourself vaulting into the arms of the guy on the elliptical machine.  This would be a great way to meet men, if you’re so inclined, except the man on the elliptical is the young kid that’s dressed like the Unabomber, trying to sweat off two pounds before the weigh- in at the next day’s wrestling match.  There isn’t enough Purell for that encounter.

 

Let’s get back to the toenail.  It was crying out for I don’t know how long, and I ignored it, through neglect, through laziness, through not being girly enough to care.

 

In its own right, it represented more than a forgotten piece of dead DNA, longing for the gaiety of better times, and better shoes.  That wasn’t the only thing I had neglected.

 

My blue toenail became the culmination of everything I had pushed down over the course of the last few months:  family drama, issues, fear, the inability to put two sentences together, the realization that I was not who I thought I was.

 

I, the gregarious, affable, sometimes loquacious, was not, in effect, an extrovert, a go-getter, a paragon of charm and wit.  I was that introverted, disproportionate creator of suspended disbelief, not about stories, but about real life.

 

In other words, when I removed the layers of polish, I was appalled at not what, but who I saw.

 

Why do we ignore the one thing about us that transcends all of the maladies; not just with our bodies, but with our situational existence?

 

In times of economic crisis, we put aside our personal needs, our passions, and our inner mysteries and place them all in the “when things are better” box, so that we can better battle the “what is,” and forget about the “what could be.”

 

We act as though they are mutually exclusive, but they’re not.

 

“What can be,” is the only thing that makes “What is,” palatable.

 

I have this habit of disarming my anxiety, mitigating my stress, and coloring my world with a glittering layer after layer of polish, while something underneath continues to decay from neglect.  That something is my spirit, just like my smurf blue toenail. The polish covers “what is,” much like sweeping things under the rug.  If we don’t see it, it’s not there.

 

Regardless of how many layers of polish you use, you can’t cover up a part of you that needs to be set free; free to breath, free to grow, free to be.  If you’re like me, you need to “Fall Upward.”

 

Let me explain…….

 

To be continued.