Blue Toenails
TW: Medical imagery
This weekend, I did something I haven’t done in many years - I painted my toenails blue.
This probably seems more like an afterthought than a big moment, but it’s been years since I was able to take a bottle of blue nail polish and apply the bright color to my feet instead of my hands. It’s all thanks to a strange phenomenon that emerged from my compulsions after they started to have far less sway on my life.
It started in college - during my freshman year, I slammed a closet door on my hip in my dorm room that was so small I could reach my desk from my bed and my head nearly hit the ceiling. In the shower, later, I realized that my hip had a large purple bruise that was far bigger than the area I hit. It looked like some kind of horrible injury.
Seeing the bruise - bigger than any other bruise I’ve ever had - spooked me. So, when I returned to my room, I decided I would prove to myself that I was okay by painting my toenails. I even went for my favorite nail art color - blue - which I started liking when I was a little girl and marveled that one of my dad’s coworkers in a high-up position could wear blue nail polish at work and still get taken seriously.
I remember leaning back in my chair until I was half on the bed, bringing in my right leg first to do the nail polish. I chose my favorite shade of blue, one that I still love wearing today - but only on my hands. I painted the nails on my right foot and then tried to bend my left leg, only to feel a strange yet extreme pain coming from the area around the bruise.
I gritted my teeth, told myself to stop being such a baby, and bent my leg enough to be able to reach my toes. It was incredibly painful, but somehow, I thought that if I could bend my leg, that meant everything was okay.
The next morning, the bruise was twice as big and my leg could barely move. It was eggplant-purple and even though I managed to hobble to class, I was quickly ushered to the emergency room afterwards by a professor who I had a meeting with. I learned that day what a blood clot was, and by the time I was put in the hospital room for the longest night of my life, a nurse took my socks and shoes off to try to find a pulse in my left foot.
She couldn’t, with the first machine, and I sat there, leaning over the edge of the bed, staring at a potentially-dead foot with bright blue nail polish, waiting for the second, stronger machine to tell if I would need an amputation.
Thankfully, after what felt like an eternity of silence, the second machine picked up a pulse. I even got a laugh out of one of the nurses from my choice of nail polish color. The polish I’d put on my hands was long gone thanks to the need to put on an oxygen reader, but the blue polish stayed on my toes and also stayed in my mind as a reminder of that horrible night.
The next time I was able to paint my toenails - at least a month post-op - I remembered the blue polish and shuddered. I couldn’t even think of putting blue polish on my toes since it seemed like bad luck. It’s not that I thought, in a typical OCD fashion, that putting blue polish on my toes was going to make me have another blood clot. But it was a strong enough feeling, regardless, that I never tried it again.
This is far from the only time I’ve either done something or refused to do something because the last time I did it was a horrible time. Even though I know for a fact that putting blue nail polish on my toenails had nothing to do with the blood clot that was growing in my leg at that time, it still felt like something I couldn’t do again, just in case.
Unlike typical compulsions, which I had a lot of in my youth, this was not a visible behavior that other people knew about. It only really came up a couple of times over the nearly-9 years since then, and it was easy enough to explain away as a simple preference.
Mom, however, knew better. I’ve been living at home almost the entire pandemic, and even though I have worn my favorite shade of blue on my fingernails many times, I haven’t worn it on my toes at all. Eventually, she asked, and I told her, knowing that I’ve said much more embarrassing things about my mental health to her over the years.
She brought up the obvious - correlation does not equal causation. Wearing blue nail polish on my toes again would not make me have the same physical condition I had at that time. At worst, it would bring back unpleasant memories, which is something I try to avoid, but force myself to face sometimes in an attempt to make myself stronger.
I didn’t make the decision to try blue nail polish on my toes until my family had a discussion about getting the vaccine with a pre-existing condition. I have done my best to ignore the way COVID could affect my life ever since I first heard of the virus, but in that discussion, I could see plainly what I was afraid of:
I could see myself in a hospital bed, alone, fighting my worst demons while already knowing how terrible they are and how much worse I am at fighting them solo. I saw myself in more painful surgeries, whether in the legs or the lungs. And, almost anticlimactically, I saw myself fine one moment and dead the next from a pulmonary embolism, with no warning or control.
It hit me that the reason I was so afraid to put blue nail polish on my toes was that I felt like, if one of the things that happened then didn’t happen now, that somehow gave me more control over a situation I can never have control over. All of my childhood obsessions and compulsions were about trying to control what would happen to me, yet none of the unrelated thoughts or actions could actually make something good happen or prevent something bad.
That night, I turned on one of my favorite comedy shows on TV and painted my toenails blue. It felt very strange, but in a way, it felt liberating. I was not dooming myself to a horrible fate by painting my toenails blue, nor could I prevent COVID by painting them a different color. Instead, all I needed to do was follow the CDC’s guidelines and stay as safe as possible until I am able to get a vaccine.
It might seem like a small, simple thing to be able to use a nail polish color I’d basically outlawed for myself for nearly a decade. But to me, this shows that with enough hard work and determination, I can push past the things holding me back and try to look forward to a brighter future - while wearing a snazzy coat of toenail polish.
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.