Admitting My Truth: I’m Really an Onion

I’ve been working on this truth thing for a while but it’s only been lately that I’ve been getting easily frustrated, anxious and generally not easy to live with.  You see, I’ve been trying to hide something, to ignore a simple truth and to pretty much procrastinate as much as I can for as long as I can on as much as I can.

What is it?

Well, I’ll get to that, but first let me take you back a little bit so that I can put this truth, my truth, into perspective.

I realize that I may lose some of you along the way and that’s cool, but if you manage to make it all the way to the end- then thank you in advance.

You see, I’m an optimist by nature.  But I know that when I start getting cynical then something is brewing.

Something big has been brewing for a while and while I don’t think I know the whole enchilada, I’m starting to get the picture.

You see, I’m an onion.

A big, fat, round, stinky onion.

Not literally, mind you, but I’m still an onion.

I’ve got layers and layers of crap piled all on top of each other, some of them stinky, some of them will make you cry and some of them are just damned hard to peel off.

My crap started piling up a long time ago and as much as I’d hate to admit it, it’s kept piling up and to this day, it’s still piling up.  A big, stinky pile of my own crap that I’m about to expose for all of you to see.

You see, I’ve created walls and boundaries to protect myself from hurt, from anger, from judgment, from prying eyes, from jealousy and from every other stupid, little thing that could possibly get to me.

And along with all of these protections, walls and boundaries, I’ve put on weight- both literally and metaphorically.

(Something for you to know: I make part of my money helping other people deal with their stuff and get their extra weight off.  Ironic? Probably not.)

To top it all off, I can pinpoint the exact moment when I started building my walls down to the exact date.

Scary, huh?

I wouldn’t say that that moment was rock-bottom because when you build up walls or layers to protect yourself, you can’t hit rock-bottom.  It’s impossible because you’ve given yourself a giant bubble-wrap protective barrier.

I didn’t hit rock-bottom for a while after that.

(That wall building date, by the way, was late in 2000. It actually proved to be a huge turning point in my life- I just didn’t know that at the time.)

The first wall that I put up was hugely protective.  It was built with tears, with vodka, with denial and with Swiss cheese fondue.  It was a highly effective combination.

I remember like it was yesterday because it was the moment that I decided to take control of my life.

Taking control of my life translated into 40+ pounds of body weight AND it was not muscle.

That was my first layer.

Created with food, created with nights of partying and too much alcohol, created by telling myself it was harmless fun and that I could stop at any time because I was in control.  Yes, I was in control and I chose my control MY way.  No one else could tell me what to do, how to deal or what was the fastest way out of it.

After that, it because incredibly easy to build more, thicker layers.

What started out small became increasingly bigger and, in a way, grew out of control.

Or more accurately, more in control. Meaning I became so “in control” of my life that I could practically orchestrate how my days were going to go, how my nights were going to go and how I was able to survive even though my onion layers were growing like wild-fire.

How do you start breaking those layers down?  Is it even possible or are we stuck to live a life that is closed off, devoid of any real pleasure, love, intimacy or close, authentic human relationships?

This became my dilemma because as much as I craved real human interaction, I had closed myself off so much that it became impossible to break through my own barriers, my own protective layers.

So I spent my days and nights in complete control of myself but ultimately wanted nothing more than to be free of the restraints that I had put on myself.

My control became something more.  My control became an almost insatiable need to be perfect.  To be perfect, to act perfect, to look perfect, everything perfect.

It’s unreasonable.  I know that now and it’s a ridiculous amount of pressure to put on yourself but looking back, it was my subconscious’ way of getting me to crack, to finally hit that breaking point or get myself closer to rock-bottom.

And I cracked, big-time.

All it took was for one singular person to walk right through those walls, reach me at my core and then trample all over me in a matter of months.

Sounds awful and it was.  It was so painful.  It was so incredibly painful that I took back control in such a severe way that it left me no option but to completely crack, just not right away.

In order to look perfect, I tried every quick-fix.  Name them, crash diets, ephredra pills, insane amounts of exercise, took up running marathons, yoga, kick-boxing, weight-lifting, master cleanser spicy lemonade drinks.

In order to be perfect, I started focusing on ways to make more money, to make myself better, to go back to school and become the world’s best health coach, personal trainer, spin instructor, pilates teacher.

You name it, I wanted to be perfect at it.

All because I was running away from myself.

All because I had actually allowed someone to get through my barriers right before he used those protective boundaries against me.

I had let myself become vulnerable and had paid dearly for it- or so I thought.

This was my real break-down.  This was the moment when I really hit rock-bottom.

This eventually became one of the most precious times in my life but only because I can look back on it after making it through the other side.

If I had realized at that moment what was truly going on, I would have been more gentle with myself but I wasn’t able to just yet.

You see part of being an onion is that you don’t know you’re an onion until some of your layers are already gone.

You look in the mirror and realize that something is very different from the days, weeks, months and years that came before but you just can’t seem to put your finger on it.

So you ignore it and go about living your life.

I stopped trying to be so perfect.  It was exhausting and hadn’t gotten me far anyway.

I started living my life more in alignment with what I really wanted as opposed to what I thought I should be doing.

I tried to take the extremes out and even though it may not have gone the way I had wanted it to, it went the way it should have.

What I added in was something so simple that it doesn’t seem like it would really make a difference anyway.

Unconditional love for myself.

I had to learn that if anyone else was ever going to love me, then I had to learn how to love myself first.

In the beginning I thought that I wasn’t deserving of love, that I wasn’t capable of love and that love certainly wasn’t going to be able to find its way to me.

Definitely a challenging onion layer for sure.

I cried my eyes out. I spent nights tossing and turning, utterly convinced that I would never find anyone who would “get” me.  I drained myself of any happiness, of any pleasure, of any good thing in my life but I never told anyone.

I kept it all to myself.

Why bother admitting it to others that I had deep-seated issues?

They wouldn’t like me if they saw just how much crap I had built up over the years- at least that’s what I told myself.

No one likes onions anyway.

They make you cry, they smell funky and they bite back when you eat them.

So I put on a happy face and faked it.

Yes, this did build up another little onion layer but in a way, it helped me.

I have a little saying.  It may be super unproductive but it’s worked for me so far.

“Fake it till you make it.”

If you’re trying to get healthier but haven’t seen any results yet, fake it.

If you’re trying to improve your self-image but haven’t been able to believe it, fake it.

I think you get the picture.

This could be the most horrible piece of advice, but it worked for me.

I faked loving myself.

And then I faked loving myself unconditionally.

And then I faked it some more.

Eventually I started to believe it.

So I did things that made me feel better about myself.

And then I did some more things that made me feel even better about myself.

Little by little, I started opening myself up and allowing the very outermost layers of myself to fall away.

Every time that happened, I got scared and wondered if people were still going to like me, if they were going to “get” me.

And sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t.

But I survived.

And I decided to keep going.  I decided to keep faking it until I felt like I was strong enough to give up faking it and actually start believing it.

This is the life of the onion.

At least this is my life as an onion.

I’m in constant flux as I break layers down, build layers up, break down some more, build some more up.

But I’m admitting that I do have layers.

And I suspect that you have layers too.

I’m not perfect and I’m far from being a non-onion.

In fact, I think it’s a pretty lucky thing for me to have become a huge, honking, stinky onion.

It’s only by seeing my faults, my weaknesses, my inconsistencies as a human being that I can help other people embrace their “onion-ness”.

If I’m meant to have layers, then let me have the stinkiest layers possible.  Let me have them and deal with them so that you don’t have to and if you have to, then let me have them so that I can help you get through the stinkiest parts.

From one onion to another, embrace who you are.  Embrace your differences and your short-comings.

Embrace your layers and find the strength that comes with having them.  It’s only by acknowledging all the different parts of you that you’ll be able to find your strength, to find your true self and then begin living it.

This is what I’m admitting.

I’m an onion.  I’m sometimes hard to handle and usually confusing but I know that now.  And I know that it’ll take another onion to get me.

So all you onions out there, welcome to my world.  It may not always smell great, but you’ll always know where you stand with me.

In the meantime, embrace who you are, embrace your layers, embrace your onion-hood.

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