What I would give for an onion

A lament

What I would give for an onion. A raw one, freshly peeled, perhaps even picked. A whole one, firm round sides perfect in the palm of my hand. What I would give to slice, first one way then the other, and if I did it right watch it fall apart in perfect squares. I’d Saute it in butter in a cast iron pan, and watch as it slowly melted from pungent to sweet. What I’d give for such an onion to do with as I wished.

Last week I volunteered for the food bank. We packed rice, milk, pasta, and cans of beans in bags and put them in boxes to be stacked on crates. While getting supplies I’d often pass a big crate of onions. Probably not organic, probably not fresh, but onions, onions! Onions all the same. I glanced about. My rice cooker has a recipe for sauteing onions to put in with rice. They’d never notice just one missing. I really considered stealing it for a moment before remembering that I don’t steal anymore. I don’t really need onion. My hunger isn’t that great.

In truth it’s not hunger I seek to sate. The School cafeteria serves onions in stir-fries or roasts. It is the act of slicing. I want my knife to bite in and cut off the top and the bottom. I want the smooth outer skin to peel away, revealing the slightly wet pearly white layer beneath. I want that smell of cooking. I want that texture beneath my hands, and �" oh gods �" I want that burning in my eyes. I want to squint out between half shut lids, as my eyes water so badly my life is a blurry mass, and my knife cuts by feel instead of by sight. I want that moment when the tears force me to stop and rub at my lids carefully with the sleeve of my arm, as to not get any juice into what’s already inflamed. It’s not hunger for food, it’s preparing it.

It’s hunger for tears. I do not cry easily. My lids ache unbearably from the inside and still I do not cry. It is not sadness that builds within me but frustration, a frightening lack of hope. I do not bottle up most emotions. Hopelessness I do. That feeling of impotence - nothing I can do, nothing I can say, nothing I can scream that could make a difference, that feeling of inadequacy in the face of a storm far larger than I, it is this that I dare not feel, and so it builds behind closed lids waiting to be expelled as tears.

I do not cry easily. It is only when life throws enough problems at me that I feel overwhelmed that they come. It is only when my financial aid isn’t coming through and I have ten pages of homework due tomorrow by ten. When there’s no rhyme or reason to why I can’t get up out of bed, why I don’t even have the energy to move. It is only when I can’t find a job on campus even though I really have tried. Only when those I care about don’t seem to care. Only when I eat alone and even forget to pray. When I need shampoo, and tea but can’t seem to find the time to go explore the city. Only when my Ex has blocked me after I gave my heart, it is only then that I could cry. Cry from a dozen petty things that by themselves would have been faceable. Only when the frustration builds behind my eyes.

Yet I cannot cry. As much as it all builds up I cannot bury my head in a pillow and sob. I want to cry at my incapacity to cry, and wail that the wails do not come. I want to let it go, fly down to the earth, release into the sky, and let go. I want the tears to be free of me, and it is times like this than more than anything I wish for an onion.

My life is made of metaphors. Everything I do is something I feel, everything I see becomes something happening inside. My life is made of actions made omens, of onions made artifice. I crave outward manifestations that, in the act of exploring something physical, my mind can follow and guess at answers illuminated by its logic. I want an onion that I could peel back layers. Hopelessness is such a shallow thing. Surely beneath it lies something more profound, something of value that I can take away, and by some alchemical transformation turn hopelessness to gold. Surely if I dig deep enough I’ll find the answer in the hard center of this thing. I’ll fry it in a saucepan, and the tears will go away. Hopelessness and frustration will turn to caramelized comfort in my mouth. The base for a good soup.  

The onion has an outer skin, a protective layer to keep bugs away. Hopelessness frightens me. When mama was in high school there came a point when she broke. She was trying to get out of school early. She was passing classes she hadn’t taken, studying for a dozen tests at once. She was at the top of her game, the top of her class. She had a plan. She was succeeding. She had hope.

Mama tells the story from a single moment in time. The vice principal walked into her remedial reading class, looked at her, and asked, “What are you doing here? Three months ago you were an A student, and now you’re in special Ed.?” I imagine her looking up blankly with vacant eyes. Shrugging as hopelessness clutched at her shoulders, and shame burned at her eyes. I imagine mama’s lack of motivation, the ability to do that just wasn’t there. We both run the same way at times, expending a lot and then crashing at the end. I’m too close to hopelessness for me to dare to feel, and so still it burns behind my eyes.

Beneath the outer skin it’s damper, slick to the touch like the tears that are found there. I am afraid of tears. It’s not that I was forbidden to cry, I have always been encouraged to be emotional, always encouraged to express. I’ve always had a feminine side, an empathy that endlessly allows me to feel. It is not that I was not allowed to cry, it is that I was not allowed to be weak. It’s been pounded into me again and again that I was born in privilege. I am strong, and my strength is meant to help those who are weak. Those who are crying.

It is not that I am afraid to cry then, but to be weak. I am afraid that if I let myself go enough to cry then I will not be there when others need me to hold them close when they are in need. I need to be forever vigilant, forever ready to wrap my arms around another less fortunate than myself, to give my wisdom, my comfort, my love, and thus impart a little of the strength that, by no fault of my own, is my birthright. I am afraid that I will not live up to my own expectations. Afraid that my birthright be wasted.

Within that skin lies another, smaller, more succinct. What is all this fear? Fear is a bandage set over a wound, an armor to protect a place that is weak, and I cannot afford to be weak. I fear weakness then, and though I do not fear fear, I distrust what lies beneath, the layer it protects against bugs, I distrust the layer that cannot bear to be cut, that cringes from a knife, that burns at my eyes. I distrust the tears that betray weakness. I distrust the fear of the hopelessness they betray.

As I cut into an onion it fears for its resources, it’s vital reserve. It fears the damage I will deal, and so it attacks my eyes with chemical defenses, and I in turn defend with tears. Is it weak to protect what strength you have? Is it wrong to foster a greater strength through a lesser weakness? To do so would be to admit an incapacity I cannot bear to have.. I cannot admit a weakness I cannot change, one that will continue till death do us part. I cannot succumb to such a thought for it might lead to a greater weakness still. Hopelessness. It would hurt me to be unworthy of my mother’s love, my father’s learning, by being unable to change the world.

As I cut into an onion I do not cut layer by layer but rather all at once. I cut side by side, first one way and then another, my blade passes through the center a dozen times before the thing is done. I long for an onion that my mind might do the same. Slicing through a single idea in different layers. One called hopelessness, one called fear, one called tears. Strength and weakness, worthiness and love, each is a manifestation of something, and yet as I slice toward the center I find that what I drive at is not just that central layer but rather the onion in it’s entirety. Perhaps devoid of it’s outer skin, I’ll not hid behind some defensive shell, but all the rest is used in cooking, soup or supine meditation. Deeper is not better, there’s more on the surface than inside.

Yet it is not quantity I seek, rather an answer that does not make me compromise my strength. It is an onion, a chemical reaction, which will let me cry without being weak. An onion that will make me look brave as I brace myself against the tears and slice on blind. An onion which, with all it’s layers, will magically answer all my problems, sending hopelessness flying far away with tears in its eyes. In truth I am too cowardly to cry. Too afraid of being judged, too concerned with appearances to look beneath them and see that a single onion will not quench my hunger. To hunger, to be weak, is to be alive, and what strength I have comes of living.

What strength I have is being challenged now, tested by college as it prepares me for life. What strength I have has been based on onions and now I find myself devoid of my drug. I hunger for a thing that I cannot have anymore, and rather than bracing myself for the wait I am slowly realizing I need a solution instead. I cannot self medicate a symptom, I need to self medicate the source. I do not know what will work yet. I could build courage, and kill my fear of tears. I could create a life where I never need cry. I could let myself be weak at times, and sometimes fail when asked to hold. I like none of these answers. None are onions. Until forced to do otherwise I will seek times and places to make good soup and keep my hopelessness at bay.