It all started when I decided to get acrylics in Louisiana. That’s a sentence that I didn’t think I’d ever write, and while nothing worthy of a Cormac McCarthy novel occurred during my time in the Deep South, irrevocable damage was done to my nail beds, and that, my friends, is something worth crying about.

You see, for the first time, but certainly not the last, a nail technician removed my gel manicure with a drill, whittling down my nails till they were more flat than sphere-like. While some removed them properly, using the soak-off method, the damage was done: I was getting gels and nail art applied nearly every other week, and what I was left with underneath was thin, brittle and peeling nails, which were incapable of growing without breaking off.