A snag

For a month now, I've overcome a bad habit of mine. Nailbiting. I don't know if it's a nervous habit or if it's taking my perfectionism the the nth degree by obliterating anything untidy, but for the past month, I've let them grow. Daily, I look at my nails and evaluate them. This one is still too short. This one's awfully squarish. They need to be a bit longer, but not so long as to accidentally scratch a child while we're at play.

Nine out of my ten nails show no sign of having ever been gnawed. One has been a refuge, a nail-biting outlet, but even that one is on its way to greater lengths.

But today, as I was getting out of the van, I knocked a finger into the door and gouged a dent in one of my longer fingernails.

A snag.

My snagged fingernail makes me want to give up growing my nails long. I don't know why, but it just does. I've ruined the good thing. I've tainted something. And now it seems like there's no use.

That's how I feel today. There's no use, I think. I can't get it completely perfect, so why try at all? And if I'm the only one who really cares, what does it matter? And if I can't identify the problem, is there really a problem to begin with?

I've hit a snag today.


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A great sadness is upon me. I have many reasons but none worth singling out.

Overall, I feel mechanical, unlovable, angry. There is a spirit of futility and failure, a lack of passion and a temptation to simply toss my arms up and say, "I quit."

I know that my feelings are affecting my family, but their unloving actions are affecting me. Do they love me? Well, yes. But in their humanity, they do things that invade my soul; their actions sometimes insist that they don't care.

On days like today,I feel like I'm spiraling downward. There is no right answer, no right action. I feel like Ebeneezer Scrooge, haunted by past, present and future, trying to figure out if my spirits are brought on by an undigested morsel of cheese. Or am I overtired? Or am I feeling without purpose? Or am I truly, honestly and completely affected by the members of this household who refuse to simply make a bed, clean a room, take out the trash, feed their animals, put their dishes in the proper side of the sink, practice their piano, oversee the child, teach a lesson, make a meal.

Ah, but I said there were no issues worth singling out. I suppose that these issues aren't single, though. They're multiplying. And just when I think my head's above water, just when I've come up for air and I'm about to gasp deeply, a tidal wave comes and pulls me to the depths again.


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I want to wrap this up tidily, but there's no way to do it. I don't have an answer. I haven't been given a revelation. There are no trite words or inspiring phrases to pull me from my funk.

It's simply a snag, and I either have to gnaw it down and forget about it or clean it up and let it grow healthy again.