Thought I would hit you with that right up top without any trigger warning. Hope you weren't eating breakfast.
I'm the type of person who would require this sort of trigger warning. It's not so much that I can't watch images of people losing nails -- in fact, I pride myself on having no trigger warnings when it comes to movie content. (Except maybe Minions.)
No, the issue I experience is on a physical level, and it comes whenever I even consider the issue of trauma to the toes. Even imagining someone stubbing their toe hard causes my testicles to involuntarily shrivel. I don't know why my testicles have such an empathetic relationship with my toes, but they do.
I'm hitting you with all sorts of fun content today, aren't I.
My own toe trauma originates, I am almost 100% positive, from kicking a soccer ball with my son in the back yard. I understand that toe injuries are common for soccer players, especially younger soccer players, but maybe not for the reason you think. I would have thought there'd be a greater risk of getting stepped on, and there probably is that, but the hard shell of your typical soccer cleat likely serves as good protection from that sort of injury. That same hard shell only makes a different injury worse, which is the jamming of the toe against the tip of the shoe, especially when kicking a ball that might be a tad overinflated.
And I wasn't even wearing cleats when I took one of many shots on our broken down backyard goal, whose net has only about three points of connection with the frame, and which has recently been bolstered by duct tape. I discovered I also like kicking with my off foot, my left foot, though my left foot does not feel the same about the experience.
I initially didn't connect the black blood blister growing under my left big toe with soccer. In fact, I didn't even realize at first that a blood blister was what it was. I'd guessed it was a bruise, which shows you just how often this sort of thing happens to me.
I figured I had to have stubbed it hard enough to cause this but not hard enough to remember it as that time I stubbed my toe real bad. The toenail was black for what seemed like several months, and then on our trip to Broome in mid-September, I noticed it had suddenly turned white -- so white, in fact, that it emitted a slight glow in the dark.
I thought this was healing. Not so much.
Soon afterward, I started to notice that my toenail was no longer fully anchored to the toe. You could wiggle it like a loose tooth. It was then I realized I was going to lose it, and it was then I attributed this to a soccer injury.
Since then the nail has been steadily freeing itself from the rest of the body, and I have been holding it in place with an ever-changing series of bandaids. It's not that I think I am going to save the nail, that its connections to the rest of my foot will suddenly revive themselves into full health. It's that I want it to disconnect at its own speed, and not suddenly as a result of putting on a sock too quickly. (And when I put on socks these days, I look like an old man possibly doing it for the last time.)
At this very moment, it has the slimmest possible connection to the toe, in the lower left corner. I tried tugging it a little bit but it wouldn't let go. Hanging on for dear life, that toenail.
When it does finally go, don't worry, it will grow back. I'm sure you knew that but I had to reassure myself. But it could take up to a year.
I tell you all this because I watched a perfectly timed movie on Sunday about the removal of nails, this time of the finger variety.
Despite a title that you could easily imagine being a horror movie, Fingernails is actually a romantic drama with a sci-fi twist. At least that's how I described it in my review. It does have something that's right out of body horror, though. In this not-so-distant future full of retro technology, there's a test that proves the existence of love between two people, which helps them decide whether their current relationship is worthy of investment. However, it requires tearing out a fingernail and having it tested alongside the fingernail of your partner.
You'd think this would be played for at least a small amount of black comedy, but that small amount is closer to minuscule. Director Christos Nikou may prefer subtle satire, or he may be more interested in an earnest exploration of the film's underlying question: If there were a scientific test that helped determine the likelihood of success of a relationship, would you take it?
Me, I was just focused on the fingernails.
As I watched the characters played by Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed use pliers to tear out the nails of happy young couples -- who are trying to figure out if their happiness is real -- I kept thinking that I wouldn't need even a fraction of the determination these people show, nor would it create the same sort of trauma at the wound site. In fact, my situation might be a lot closer to the brief pain of tearing off a bandage, if that.
But I don't know, I haven't progressed to that point yet. The stuff I've read online talks about when the nail eventually falls off, and of course it will do that. Each time enough showers force a change of bandaid, I have a new opportunity to assess what I'm dealing with.
Until then, I am hanging on to as much of myself as I can.
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