The Onion I Didn’t Want To Peel

I don’t know when it began.

The peeling.

Maybe it was always happening. So slow and quiet that I never even noticed it. Maybe it was only when the layers started coming off faster, rawer, that I finally felt it. The sting. The ache. The relentless tearing away of everything I thought I was, everything I had built to cover myself. To hide. To protect.

When I look back, this is not even the first time. When I noticed it last, I was standing on the edge on the American side of Niagara Falls in 2017. Ready to jump. To end the ache. But I didn’t. Then, I had retreated. Then, I learned to collect the scattered peels and tuck them back, hoping I won’t have to look at them again.

And now, here I am. Still peeling. Still pulling at layer after layer, thinking—each time—that surely this must be the last one. That surely I must have reached the core this time. But there is always more. More to strip away. More to lose. And every time I think I understand, the ground shifts beneath me, and I fall further, deeper into the hole I didn’t even realize I was digging.

I don’t know what I look like without these layers. And I don’t know if I even want to know.

Because what if, after all of this, there is nothing left? What if I peel away so much that I disappear entirely? Maybe that is the real fear—not the pain of peeling, not the endless digging, but the possibility that, at the very end of it all, there is no me to find. Just a hollow space where something should have been.

But stopping is not an option either. I have come too far. I have peeled too much to turn back now. And even if I wanted to stop, how could I? The layers keep coming off, whether I ask for it or not. Maybe I am not peeling them away—maybe they are shedding on their own. Dissolving under the weight of time, of questioning, of all the things I can no longer pretend to believe in.

I don’t know how deep this hole is. I only know that I am in it, and everything is blurry. I used to think I could see where I was going—that I had a map, a plan. But now? Now there is only fog. No clear direction. No end in sight. No GPS. Just walls around me, closing in and stretching endlessly at the same time.

And sometimes, I think—I did this to myself. I dug this hole, didn’t I? I kept peeling, kept pulling, and kept reaching for something I couldn’t name. I couldn’t identify. And now I am here. Alone. With the rawness of everything I have uncovered. With nothing but my own voice echoing back at me.

Except… maybe I am not alone.

Maybe there are voices outside this hole. People who see me, even when I cannot see myself. People who reach out, even when I do not know how to take their hands. People who say, I will help you find a way out if you let me.

And I want to believe them. I do. But what if they are only reaching for the version of me they have seen? What if they only know the mask? What if they look closer and realize there is nothing underneath? What if they leave?

What if, after everything, I am still not enough?

I also think about the layers I have already peeled away. What am I supposed to do with them? Should I bury them, pretend they never existed? Should I gather them, stitch them together, and build something new? Or should I just leave them scattered around me, pieces of who I used to be, reminders of who I can never be again?

Because peeling is not enough. I cannot just take it away forever. At some point, I will have to create. I will have to decide what stays. What matters. What I want to keep.

And maybe that is the hardest part.

Not the peeling. Not the hole. But the choice. The responsibility of building something out of everything I have lost. Of trusting that there is something worth saving. Of believing that, even after all this, I am still here. That I am real. That I exist beyond the layers, beyond the peeling, beyond the questions.

I do not have answers yet.

But maybe I do not need them right now. Maybe it is enough to just pause. To stop digging for a moment. To sit with the layers. To sit with the fog. To sit with the uncertainty. To listen to the voices outside the hole. And wonder if, maybe, I do not have to climb out alone.

Maybe it is not about reaching the core. Maybe it is about learning when to stop peeling. When to start shaping. When to take what I have left and make something out of it.