Onions

Onions are an interesting food.  On the outside, they appear sturdy and solid. You drop them? No problem. They roll around, with no real damage done.  The minute you begin slicing them, though? They begin falling apart.  “Skin” falls off, and you realize you need to peel a layer off.  When you start chopping them up, in efforts to make them smaller, layer after layer falls off. Some people choose to use the layers that have fallen off, in whatever recipe they are making, while others toss the “broken” layers away, without another thought…

The fact is, everyone has a little onion in them.  Very few people are completely open books, sharing everything about themselves with no hesitancy. Even celebrities and reality show stars who put their entire lives in the public eye,  will choose to keep certain things from the cameras, as a way to maintain a little bit of privacy.  And who can blame them?  Seldom, is someone willing to lay everything about them out for any and everyone to see, and critique. Even onions keep their layers, until they are forced off.

Being female, it is sometimes more difficult to keep all of your layers. Someone always wants a bit of you – your children, your friends, your co-workers, your boyfriend/husband, even your pets. Before you realize it, many layers have been pulled, cut, chopped, and sometimes even ripped off, and you feel bare. Exposed. Hurt. Being the more emotional of the two genders, your entire life feels like a roller coaster of emotions. You laugh, cry, feel frustration, happiness, stress, elation and sadness all at the same time – so it seems. We often have no control, or understanding of WHY we are acting or feeling the way we do. Men look at us strangely, hold us at arms length and try to figure out what to do with us.

At times, we feel we can conquer the world, and at others, we are fragile, and could potentially break at any moment.  More often than we’d sometimes like, we can’t full embrace, enjoy or inspect whatever mood we are in, because we have somewhere to be, someone to care for, a boo-boo to kiss, a meal to cook, a house to clean, and we just can’t. We cant stop, but we sometimes dont think we can go another step, either.

 We have layers.

Some we like, and are proud of – our accomplishments, our patience (if we have it), our understanding and loyalty… and we want to keep them forever.  However, we also have layers we NEED someone to pull off, and expose.  Denial can be detrimental to relationships, but we often don’t recognize the negative aspects of ourselves until someone else points them out.  Our natural instinct is to focus on the positive attributes of ourselves, and the negative attributes of others.  

Women (and some men, as well!) can have unrealistic expectations, put too much pressure on ourselves and those we love the most, and as hard as it is to believe – we can get on other’s nerves. Gasp! I KNOW!! Unbelievable…

The next time you feel a layer being pulled off, take a deep breath, and let it go.  We can’t keep all our layers, nor should we.  Open yourself up.  No one gets to the useful part of the onion until they get rid of what they can’t use, first.  Accept that some of your layers are useful, and others are not.  Allow those who care about you to help peel away the useless layers, so you can be your best self.