Dermatillomania

"Why do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Your fingers. They're always messed up."
"Oh, yeah, I know. I don't know why I can't leave them alone. I think maybe it's an anxiety thing."
"What anxiety?"
"Just general life anxiety? You know me."
"Doesn't it hurt? It looks like they bleed."
"They do. It hurts, kind of, but it's mostly just annoying. Like I'll be picking at a thumb and somebody will want to shake my hand and I'll have to be weird about it. Can't go around getting fluids on my acquaintances."
"Why don't you just stop?"
"I would if it was just a conscious thing. I usually don't realize I'm doing it until I feel blood on my fingers or running down my hand. Movies are the worst. TV too, but movies especially. I have to move, have to keep myself busy, too fidgety, always end up coming out of a theater with shredded cuticles. When I was in middle school, I remember once, I was off in space during a science class. I liked the teacher and the class. We had a pretty good relationship, and this was back when I was still a good student. I got bored and my thoughts wandered off, but by the end of class I'd torn off half of my thumbnail. It was probably my left hand? I was bleeding pretty bad, we had paper towels in the room, one of the machines with the handles you could really crank to get a whole lot at once. I ran out with my thumb wrapped in those rough, brown paper towels, the ones that were only a step away from tree bark. The ones you could almost hear crack when you bent them. I don't remember if anybody noticed or not but I must have gone to the nurse's office to get a Band-Aid or something. I used to have a lot of shirts and pants with bloodstains on the hems from where I would wrap up my fingers."
"But you still do it."
"Yeah. That's actually why I carry a handkerchief now. It's got little brown spots all over it."