“If you were an onion, and I peeled back the first three layers, what would I find?”
I once read this question in Matt Abrahams’ Think Faster, Talk Smarter, and somehow, it brought me
back to you.
I remembered your fingers running through my hair while we read the same book, arguing over
thoughts neither of us knew would someday become memories.
Back then, I thought the answer was simple.
𝘈𝘯 𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦.
I didn’t know that some questions only reveal their meaning after someone becomes the answer.
Because an onion is never just an onion.
You peel one layer, and there is another. Then another. You keep going, believing that somewhere
beneath them all is the part you are supposed to find.
Maybe that was how I loved you. I kept peeling.
Through that way, I learned the anger behind your silence. The pain beneath your distance. The
tenderness you rarely showed. I memorized the parts of you that hurt, hoping that understanding them
would teach me how to love you better.
And perhaps that was my mistake. I thought knowing your wounds meant I had to endure whatever
came from them.
I mistook understanding for permission.
I told myself that you were only sharp because you had been hurt before. Like an onion, raw and
pungent, stinging the eyes of anyone who came too close.
So I stayed.
I waited for the heat to change you. Because onions soften when they are cooked – their sharpness
fades, their sweetness begins to emerge.
I thought people did, too.
I thought if I loved you patiently enough, gently enough, you would eventually become soft in my hands.
But some things do not soften simply because you love them.
And some people can explain why they hurt you without ever learning how to stop.
For a long time, I thought my purpose was to understand every layer of you.
Until I realized I had been peeling and peeling, while you never once reached for mine.
Maybe that is what an onion teaches me now:
Not every layer exists to be removed. Some layers protect what is still tender. Some layers were built
because something underneath was once hurt. And sometimes, the kindest thing you can do is stop
peeling.
So I did.
I left the onion whole.
Not because there was nothing left to discover, but because I finally understood that love should never
require one person to endlessly understand another.
And simply because, there is one thing you forgot;
𝘐’𝘮 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘰𝘰…