Painting your nails is an adventure. You start off with the hope of achieving a beautiful gloss of color. However, this is not how it always works out. Therefore, there are multiple mental stages you go through while painting your nails.

1. Excitement

Finally, your gross, plain nails are going to receive a splash of color. Maybe you will do a design or use a sparkly topcoat. Either way, you are extremely excited to start the calming process of painting your nails.

2. Confusion

But, how can you possibly choose only one color? Should you do a bright red or a classic pink? You could spice it up with an eclectic blue or green. Maybe you should paint one nail a different color for an accent. Or maybe you should paint each of your nails a different color! You are overwhelmed with your choices and confused how you could possibly pick just one.

3. Hope

Alright, you have started painting your nails and it’s going great. The first nail looks perfect and you can already envision how the completed product is going to look. Everyone will be complementing your nails and asking what color you used. The world will be astonished at your intricate nail design and instantly faint at the beauty of it all.

4. Delusion

Then, you make a little mistake. “It’s no big deal!” you tell yourself. This is an easy fix. All it is is a little smudge. No one will ever notice. Your topcoat will cover it all up and smooth it over anyway. It still looks perfect!

5. Denial

You are great at painting your nails. That wasn’t a mistake! You meant to do that! Everything is going to turn out amazingly. This is just how you want them to look anyway! If your nails look too perfect then people will think you have way too much time on your hands.

6. Anger

As mistakes add up, your denial leads to anger. How do people possibly manage not to smudge their polish before it’s dry?! It’s all that chair's fault for being in the way. You hate that chair. And you hate all of those online beauty gurus that make their tutorials look effortless. Witchcraft! That is the only feasible answer! How dare they lead you into a false sense of hope!

7. Guilt

Then again, it was your fault for moving after you finished. You should have just kept your hands still on the table. Your phone could have waited. It is all your fault that your nails are messed up now. Any anger you had towards others is now redirected to yourself.

8. Bargaining

But, maybe you can change the mistakes into something cooler. Or maybe you can just pretend that you did your nails ironically and planned to totally mess them up. Maybe you can salvage them somehow.

9. Acceptance

Finally, you learn to accept the fate of your poor nails. There may be polish on your cuticles and the nail art may be smudged, but at least you tried. You accept their imperfect appearance because they are just like you: flawed but still amazing.