OK, let’s make a very long story… very slightly less long. (I do have a reason for sharing this, btw; it’ll all make sense in like two minutes. God Willing…)
Basically, I just looked down to see:
1) that my very first false nail ever had somehow caved in on itself, done several gymnastic feats, and flipped over… only to reveal 
1.5) a smallish pool of sticky, red liquid (which wasn’t blood) hanging out and enjoying life in the midst of my natural nail plate.
(I did have a second thing to report here but let’s save that for later, shall we?)
For those of you in the know (and, may I say that I am not one of y’all pristine and proper, gregarious and graceful young lasses with perfect nails and perfect manners and perfect (or at least not-scary) hair.
I have been to a salon precisely once in my life; back in 2001 or so, my very best (human) friend gifted me with a pro manicure (to celebrate the signing of my very first teaching contract! YAY FOR MY STUDENTS!! Love you TONS!!! And thank you sooo much dear L!!)
Anyway, getting me to that location on that one occasion ITSELF became quite the occasion.
And it was also that exact occasion at that location which convinced me that the special occasion would never have occasion to occasion again.
Aka the young man did something interesting and wondrous to all of my nails, causing them to grow into my flesh forever more, aka major ouch, aka I ain’t removing a single one of them, yo. (Hmph. As if.)
(I fully realize that this sounds as though I’m ungrateful to my precious friend, whose generosity is greater than that of anyone I’ve ever met or heard tell of; after Jesus, I mean. Which is appropriate, since she is one of the very few born-again believers I have been blessed to meet and hang out with. In my entire life! But I’m totally not ungrateful, and I don’t blame her for this… occasion. It’s not her fault, she couldn’t have known, and she had herself gone there before, several times, in fact, with excellent result. And I’m not just saying that because she’s reading this, lol. 
Anyway, I can’t even remember who put it into my head this past week, but someone did, and for the past several days, I’ve been scheming and spending (Aka working on a precarious, precocious, precognition-ness, and PRICEY plan) to overlay my nails with some form of epoxy, in order to make them too heavy to pierce the sides of my fingers.
Instacart yada yada, and now I have several forms of “builder gel.” And two baby LED lamps. (And glitter…)
I had initially feared acrylic was the only material that would work for this, but I refuse to use UV light, and also, the vapors would be oppressive in my non-ventilated workspace.
(I’d say “long story short” here, but we both know that this is impossible for me to accomplish, heh. xD
So!
I did all sorts of research, both professional and “YouTube university for the reasonably-broke college student with access to the Dollar Store.”
I painted on “builder gel in a bottle” in cherry red, and waited for the new extensions to cure onto my nails, within something called a Poppit (?!!), aka nail form, under that LED lamp.
If you know anything about epoxy resin (and I do, for I have put down several floor coverings made of 100 per cent solids clear epoxy, spiked with large, fabulous, and NON-GARAGE-style flakes of MICA. 
The floor kind cures chemically, which, for that product, involves leaving it alone for 24 hours.
These nails, or rather the system that creates them, is intended to cure under an LED lamp in about two minutes. (It’s called gel nails btw.)
SO!
You can imagine my shock at discovering that the previously-cured-seeming bottom or base layers (closest to my nail) had either cured and then uncured, OR, for some reason unbeknownst to me, REFUSED to cure… even though the gel had seemed fully hardened and dry to the touch during my stint as a mad scientist the other day.
It HAD to have been dry to the touch for me to paint over the first coat with a second and third.
The reason I know this is because there is something called a sticky layer that one has to wipe away with some form of non-acetone liquid before painting on the next layer, if I understand correctly.
So I did, and I did. I thoroughly checked on the first layer and its integrity and solidity before moving on to the next one.
(NOTE: I do have photos of this stage, but not sure if they should be added here, AND I am “concerned” to note that the layer was sooo papery and thin and, like, FLUTTERY. But anyway.)
I painted on two more red layers, and then two clear top coats, wiping as instructed and filing as needed.
The day after that, I noticed some high points and filed them with a hand file.
The next next day, I noticed that around the cuticles, the concoction had began to lift a little bit, very likely due to user error, and therefore purchased an electronic file (which I have used for at least eight hours, in a reasonably-frenzied attempt (or 12) to smooth the nails and repair the polish).
So again I say, “you can imagine my utter SHOCK at the discovery that my first layer had not cured fully!”
After removing the sticky residue and cutting away the sharp edges of gel that remained on my nail, I did some detective work.
The only thing I can think of is that thing we earlier discussed, aka it either DID cure properly at first, but then melted or uncured, somehow, OR, it only cured at the top and not the inside of the layer (like it formed a skin that was, indeed, granite-level hardness).
The only reasons I can imagine this would’ve happened include
- the lamp wasn’t as strong as it needed to be; and, indeed, they were from different systems, the lamp and the gel, and neither listed any watts or lumens or however LED is measured. And
- the red pigment or dye, or whatever colouring agent, prevented the cure from happening in the 60 seconds. Like, the polymers or atomic plasticness or whatnot couldn’t see the light, or they couldn’t be seen by it, I guess.
I do suppose that each of these makes perfect sense; though the light was strong enough, I imagine, to have nuked all of the under layers along with each new one.
Then again, if the red pigment was actually the culprit, then it also makes perfect sense that each subsequently-added layer introduced even more blockage to the under-layer, and perhaps even those upper layers of red gel.
(I’m so over this topic by now, btw. After thinking about it for an hour, and then typing all this for another hour, and now editing it for even more hours (ok, just one… but still), I’m so, so, SO tired and also, like, OVER this! More on that in another post, btw. Yes, I see the lessons and metaphors in literally everything, muahah. Ooh, do I love y’all. Lol. Praying for each and every one of you <3
ANYWAY, back at the ranch…
I do, in fact, have several more theories and ways of testing their validity… but right now I have a task to do. And that’s… fixing this nail!
I mean look at it, I can’t go around like this, can I?
Oops, what I meant to say is that this task (of fixingness) involves getting even more vexed about the whole situation and writing up a storm about the entire incident.
So that I can share it with you, I mean.
So here I am.
But instead of ranting to you, I’m actually here to share something with y’all that immediately stuck out to me about this whole drama:
The gel that either “melted” or never cured was hidden from sight as it kept getting covered by more external layers, which ended up tricking me into thinking that nothing was wrong with the first coat.
This reminded me of people who are wounded emotionally as youngsters, but either hide it for some reason (ie In order to protect themselves from further injury, or because complaining isn’t tolerated) or don’t realise it themselves.
(Tho, it’s certainly possible to substitute “wounded” for “as-yet-immature.” Fret not, however, for we all must learn somewhere <3 Praise Be To GOD! <3 <3 <3 )
Anyway, these dear souls often go through life “bleeding internally” from said wounds.
Some are fully unaware of the injuries, some are aware but gloss over them, some are aware and think of nothing else; some are not only aware of the problems, but intent upon giving lectures and disses to either the person who hurt them, or people who were aware of the situation, but didn’t help. They might do so with visible anger, or passive aggression, or even an air of “I’m ok now, but lest we forget, tee hee, it’s YOU who made me like this! Eheh!” (Like “I’m kind of annoyed, but I’m mostly over it, but don’t think that I forgot about it, so there!”
I can think of a great many additional scenes which illustrate such, and I’m sure you can, as well.
Instead of dwelling on those, however, I’m interested in finding ways to both DETECT the “non-curing” in time to be able to fix things, and ways to teach people how to avoid this in the future. (Both my gel nail fiasco AND the whole “she be wounded from her break-up, and yet rolled right into a new relationship with a guy who’s every last bit as narcissism as the last guy was,” aka Storms A’coming, sis.
Most of all, though, I’m obsessed with finding Godly, NON-HYPNOSIS and/or non-RIDICULOUS and HARMFUL (and UNGODLY) “therapies” to help these “uncured” peeps to heal properly so they (we) can move on and paint more layers, knowing it’s FINE, since the previous layers aren’t half-baked, and won’t cause the shenanigan that my gel nail did.
(For the record, these ridiculous and unGodly therapies or “modalities” include the following beastly things:
“Shadow work,” yoga, EMDR, “energy work,” “light work,” reiki, channeling, tarot, ouija, “breath-work,” “energy therapy,” anything to do with crystals, dream catchers… even “fasting and praying to get what I want out Of God!” (As IF! Hmph. He MADE THE UNIVERSE, yo! PRAISE TO HIM! <3 :)))))
Ok, time to fix this nail, then.
Much love to you all, and prayers over you, my friend. In Christ JESUS (Who ROCKS!)
-SB
METANOiA Means 