fingernails grow back.

My best friend's dog bit me about four months ago. My finger was in pain and quite mangled, but after a heavy dose of antibiotics and compulsive slathering of topical ointments, the bites soon faded, my skin grew back, and my finger looked almost human.

(Almost.)

While there were no traces of trauma on my finger (insert plug for Neosporin), my finger nail was cracked in the middle. After three months, the crack only worsened, and what was initially a slight discomfort grew into a routine nuisance that prevented me from running my fingers through my hair, typing without a Band Aid, or eating spicy food with my hands. After I returned from India, I discovered the snag had become a hole in the middle of my nail. 

I was permanently damaged. I was 23, had three white hairs and a dosa belly. I had a flesh wound without even having joined the CIA (yet).

And so while I sat in a corner and wailed about the end of  my life, my mother stroked my hair and told me what she tells me whenever I have been hurt, wounded, punctured: "Let it air. It will soon grow out, beta, and you won't remember it ever pained so much."

So I aired it (much to the dismay of work colleagues and unsuspecting subway car passengers who were forced to be in proximity to the flesh). I threw caution (and all my Band Aids) to the wind, and as I consumed myself with life, I did not realize my nail bed was slowly and steadily restoring itself. I promised myself that I would get a manicure (I actually hate seeing paint on my nails) once it was healed. The hole had moved up several millimeters. Diaphanous fibers had begun to germinate.

I was cured. 

At least, I was en route.

Vestiges of the wound now remain only in the crooked tip of my nail, and in a subtle dent right in the middle that I can only feel with the pad of my other index finger. It was an ephemeral pain (unlike my three white hairs, which have refused to budge), and it's been rendered obsolete with the new year.

I am getting a manicure on January 16th.

And all I did was air it out.