Life is Like an Onion

It’s all the same. Nothing is ever going to change. It is what makes the story. Unfolding the truth but yet the lines are creased in to stay, they won’t ever go away. Just like the pain, the pain of losing everything and never being able to get it back, Sarah writes on her notebook as a tear falls down the curve of her cheekbone.

“Time always comes out with the truth. You, of all people should know about that. You have always been the one that draws the short stick in every situation. You’re parents. You’re boy friend. Family problems. Dude, you even have bad luck with the little shit. Didn’t your car get towed last week? The shitty thing is that you have had some serious hardships but for some reason problems still want to drag along with you, slumming you down. Every little thing, a matching sock you can’t find, you get food poisoning, you get cancer,” says Hannah.

There is a pause in the conversation but then Hannah continues on. “You should be a big believer in that saying ‘things always happen for a reason because then you would be a believer in that all this shit, this fucked up shit that happens in life, will be good for something you know? But what I think is, is that life is just a playground for hell. It’s torturing us, pushing us to do the wrong things to see how much faith we really got, and then takes the ones suffering and pulls them deeper and deeper into its grasp until life wins. You know?”

“Ya I know.” Sarah says in return.

“Don’t worry, it will get better”, Hannah says with a grin while nudging Sarah. “But seriously, you’re a good person dude. Ask anyone who knows you, they will tell you that they like a lot about you. Hang in there, at least for me.”

Hannah had always been a good friend to Sarah. She understood Sarah’s dry humor and could easily relate to Sarah, but would never dare tell Sarah she knew how she felt. It reminded Sarah of an old friend she had lost. Hannah and Sarah were the type of friends that didn’t talk about problems a lot. They liked to skip over the bad shit and get high to be cured for a while. It helped Sarah see the good, or try at least. Hannah was a beginner friend to Sarah, someone who had to pass tests in order to cross the line into friendship. So far she was passing with flying colors.

Being helpful is to say the least about Sarah. She knew what to make of situations; she could look at the mirror with confidence she brought out the best in everyone else but herself. She was the cure to a lot of problems for others. She was like the North Star, guidance to it all. She had a soft look to her, an innocent look, but was far from fitting her image. Her eyes told everyone that she had a secret though. Her eyes lead to her heart, and maybe people knew but many people didn’t ask. No one asked. Sarah was quiet, and her friends knew she didn’t like to speak her feelings. She would rather smoke them away. But she was real; lead people to being more hopeful in things they were losing grip of. She made a few mistakes, but was known to be a good person. All that Sarah wanted was to be a good person; she strived every day to be a good person. It became more difficult as she grew weaker to the mishaps she would always encounter. The pain would draw out her eyes more and more and so she would hide herself away from the world more and more. Everything bad kept adding up more and more.

Sarah started to recognize all the bull shit she put up with in her life: The fighting parents, the cheating mother, the divorce, the marriage, her broken heart, her forgotten father, her alcoholic mother, her disappeared brother. Everything was fucked up. Now she realized she had one more to add to the list. She was losing hope in everything she had left. She looks up at the ceiling, holding her breath, hoping that her glistening eyes don’t give away her whirling emotions. “Anyways dude, I am out, I have this paper I need to write for class tomorrow, and I got it get done. Don’t need any more bullshit right?” she says with a smirk.

“Right, later dude.” Hannah says in return.

“Hey have a good night,” Sarah says while giving Hannah the finger.

“Yah, you too.” Hannah says replying with the double finger. Sarah smiles and walks out the door into the cold air. The colds air sends shivers down her spine reminding her of her ex boyfriend’s hands. Quickly trying to control her thoughts, she hops in her car, blazes the heat and turns on her music. Shaking from the nights iced over air, she moves to the beats of her music, swaying her head back and forth, back and forth. She starts singing to the words of the song.

“It's rubbing it, it’s itching it, it’s applying cream

It's the foreigners sightseeing with high beams; It's in my dreams

It's the monsters that I conjure, It's the marijuana

It's embarrassment, displacement; it's where I wander

It's my genre; It's Madonna's videos

It's game shows, cheap liquor, blunts,

It's sleep, life, and death

It's speed, coke, and meth

It's hay fever, pain relievers, oral sex, and smoker’s breath

It stretches for as far as the eye can see

It's reality, fuck it, it's everything but me.

“Fuck it, it’s everything but me. I am no scapegoat,” she says to herself in the car.  Listening to music helps. It’s like when children hide under their blankets when their scared. They know it won’t protect them, but not seeing what is going to hurt them helps. Not remembering the thoughts for that second that she sings that song will help, even though she knows the memories are just around the corner at the end of that song.

Sarah pulls into her parking space. It’s midnight. She realizes that her three roommates are probably sleeping so she needs to be quiet when entering the apartment. She puts the key into the lock. She turns it slowly to open up the door. “Busted”, she says with a grin. The door signals a loud beep to sound throughout the apartment because of her security system. Her only security system she had. She knew it was coming. She walks into her room and shuts her door. Sarah has an obsession with shutting her door. Even though it blocks out the heat from her room, which she hates, she still has to shut it. She feels like it will protect her. The only other protection she feels like she has besides the bolted doors, locked up windows, and bed covers.

Once she is in her room, she plops down on her bed and rests her head on her pillow while her knees bob side to side in the air. She realizes how much she hates being sober. When she is drugged, she feels like the drug has formed a shield against memory, pain, and guilt. Her heart feels no hurt. Her mind runs free to think happy thoughts for the time she has before it wears off. She is safe. This is the protection she is comfortable with. When it wears off, she feels like her shield of gold has now melted and the gold becomes her memories sinking in every inch of her, disappearing into her head to haunt her. It plays a trick on her. Yet, she feeds for more, for the pleasure of time being. It is the world she dreams of, the reality she wants in her own world that she is forced to live in. She hates it. Her memories begin to find their way back. She spots the plastic butterflies on her wall. It makes her remember a past experience with her mother; butterflies were in her stomach. They weren’t love butterflies.

“You’re a mistake Sarah. You are always screwing up. You never have time even to make a difference, make things okay, because you screwing up all the time! You are useless, hear to just make everyone look bad”, the picture of her mother comes into her head as her lip quivers. A tear falls down her cheek. It was her mother’s drunken rant. Those were the words of her mother that haunt her every day. She quickly tries to remove the thought, but only by adding another, like her brain is addicted to feeling pain and finds every way to keep it going. Her stomach starts to hurt while remembering what happened next. She remembered the next thing her mother did was throw herself on top of Sarah, hitting her while screaming and crying. Her mother was mumbling while she was screaming so Sarah couldn’t make out the words. “You are so stupid, you know you need to be medicated”, her mother yelled. “Drinking won’t solve your problems, look at me.”

“I hate you”, I said I hate you!” Sarah’s mother threw Sarah’s depression pills in Sarah’s face. So, Sarah decided to take the pills. She decided it was enough. The pain was too much. She swallowed the pills, all 36 of them. Sarah then looked up at her mother with tears running down her eyes.

“Are you happy?” Sarah said to her mother. Being in panic, Sarah’s mother ran for the phone and dialed 911. Sarah’s memory started to blur from there: cops, tubes, puking, and resting; that is all she remembered. Her mother had Sarah’s stuff packed up the next day and told Sarah she was either going to live with her father or be sent to a mental institution. Her mother wasn’t going to put up with Sarah’s bullshit anymore.

Sarah comes back to her room, trying to forget about her mother. Looking around her room again, she notices the picture she has up of her father on her whiteboard across from her desk.

“I have a girlfriend now who lives with me. She has two younger kids. You don’t want that, Sarah. It’s not that I don’t want you to live with me sweetheart, I am just trying to look out for what is best for you.” Her dad pops into her head. She starts to remember the concert they went to. Sarah was so excited, thrilled to finally spend some time with her father. “We need some bonding time, how about you and I go to the Jack Johnson concert?”

“Really, I mean when “ Sarah says excitedly.

“This next weekend. I have missed you. We need this. So be ready to spend a weekend with me,” her father says. Sarah fades back into existence and turns over in her bed. She starts to silently cry. Her dad ended up taking her to the concert, but it was with his girlfriend and two kids. He didn’t even sit by his daughter; his blood, his skin, his flesh. In fact, he spoke two words to Sarah because she knew how upset she was. “Great Concert.” Sarah has never spent a day alone with her Dad ever since the divorce.

“He calls once a week, he helps with bills, but that doesn’t make him my father,” Sarah remembers saying to her mother after the divorce.

“Your father is a pathetic loser who doesn’t care about anyone but himself!” Her mother snarled back. Her mother hates her father. The dry humor about it all is that she has no reason at all to hate her father.

“Says the woman who cheated on her husband six times for no apparent reason?” Sarah says sarcastically. Her mother knows that Sarah doesn’t care for her. She knows that Sarah knows that her mother is the reason why Sarah’s dad divorced her.  Sarah’s mother was never happy with Sarah’s father. She would always throw things in his face. “You work too much, you are never here, and you don’t spend any time with the kids. You don’t even feel like part of the family,” she would holler at him. She was right to a degree, her mother that is. Yet, her father worked only so he could support her and her luxury needs. He worked to feed his kids, he worked to pay the bills, and he worked because he didn’t want his life to keep going the way it was. But, he wouldn’t say that. Sarah’s father, being the man he was had a soft heart. He would always become vulnerable, like a woman vulnerable to a bouquet of flowers. This is what started Sarah’s mother’s nasty habit.

The pain just grew from there. It deteriorated the family. Sarah’s dad put it to an end and started a new life, with new hopes and dreams for a new family. Her dad tried to keep up with Sarah, he tried to talk to her, but he knew how much the divorce affected Sarah. He didn’t have the power or ability to fix Sarah’s broken heart from it all, he couldn’t bear see her breakdown in front of him. Then he would have to do something about it. All he would be able to do is cry.

Sarah’s dad is now just scared. He knows he still cannot bring up the divorce, the pain. Sarah’s life took a whole new direction, and the destination wasn’t clear anymore. She lost her head, she lost her heart, and she lost her family. He knows he is part of the reason why, and he is truly scared to see how intoxicated she has become from this pain that has been carried in her system for years and years.

There is the saying that you learn from your experiences and the things that go on in your life. This is how we learn to talk, this is how we learn to react, and this is how we become the people we are today, is by our confrontations. Sarah’s confrontations affected her in a different way than it did most people; it affected her to repeat all the bad without the ability to control it. She started to fuck up. She was an honor student. Well, she was before her parent’s got divorced. Now she was your regular 2.5 GPA student. She had a boyfriend though. Sarah’s boyfriend was great.

Sarah had been in a relationship with a boy named Mike for 4 years of her life. He was great, handsome, played football. He was really good in school. He loved her. He loved her so much. Sarah loved him in a way that was hard to express. She loved him more than there are words in the dictionary of all languages. Unfortunately, the divorced blinded Sarah and possessed her. It turned her into a siren. It is like reeling a fish in and knowing you aren’t going to keep it, but instead you watch it suffer while it’s feigning for air. The fish is dying while you watch it gasp for its last breath, and then finally with only a second left until death, you throw the fish back in the sea. Sarah tricked him into loving her only to torture him by being indecisive on her feelings. She would test her boundaries by intoxicating herself and throwing her onto other men, wouldn’t do anything, but just tease and maybe throw them a sumptuous kiss. The next day following, she would call Mike and tell him she needed a break. This happened four times. Eventually, his heart couldn’t take it anymore and he wanted nothing else to do with her.

All of these memories flood Sarah’s body with emotions. These haunting memories of pain and guilt kill her in every way. Mike won’t even talk to her to this day; he hates her. “I want nothing to do with you, my life is so much better without you, just leave me alone. Stay away from my family and me. I am warning you.”  Those were the last words he spoke. It killed her. But the reason why is because it killed him.

Mike was no longer your honor student. He no longer played football. He no longer was a nice guy. He suffered a broken heart and his life suffered because of it. He had this plan. He had everything figured out. He was going to marry this girl named Sarah that he was absolutely in love with. He was going to be architecture and become successful. He was going to make everything okay. He wanted to be the one to show Sarah that love truly exists. He felt guilty for not being there when the divorce happened, but he was really bad with showing his feelings, he didn’t know how to react to a woman crying. It is a guy thing.

Sarah started to change though; she didn’t want to be around him as much. She wanted to drink with her friends and go out and party. She started to drift off and tease other men to make them fall foolishly in lust with her for the night. Then she would make out with them and tell Mike the next morning. It happened a few times, but he knew and understood why she may be doing this.

After a few times around the block with the same situation, Mike started to become weaker. Sarah wanted this breaks, and time apart when all Mike wanted was just to be there for her, to help her and to try to understand. It was hard for Mike to understand because he came from the successful, all American family. He had no family problems and didn’t have a slutty whore as a mother figure.  Mike kept pulling and Sarah kept pulling back and eventually Mike fell in the mud. He hated her for doing this to him. He lost it. He started to do drugs, and not care anymore. “What was worth living if without love?” he would think. Mike now was out of school, still doing drugs, terribly unhappy with no job, at home, with his parents. He was a mess and it was because of Sarah.

“It’s because of me”, Sarah said to herself still in the same position on her bed as before. She started to cry more and more, and she realized how bad she has screwed up her life. She not only pushed away the one she loved, but she pushed away her mother, her father, and everyone else. Sarah’s mother was reasonable enough to be pushed away, Sarah always thought. Her father, she was so mad at her father for leaving her behind in his new life, and she hated to hate him but it was uncontrollable. Everyone else just couldn’t understand. They couldn’t understand how much this affected her. It’s like people’s taste buds. We all have them, but we all have different likes and dislikes. Just because we find something delicious and delightful doesn’t mean that everyone else will enjoy it as well. Our taste buds differ. Our lives differ. We cannot say we understand, because we will never understand as the other person listening to the story. Not even when they grow up will they understand. Sometimes, that is what is so hard. There is no one to relate to because no one goes through the exact feeling that someone else has in that moment.

It has been four years since the divorce. More things came down as the years passed on. After the divorce and breaking up with her boyfriend, she then found out that her best friend was moving away. The only person that Sarah could trust with her secrets was leaving her, which continued on with the drought of unhappiness. The next unseen tragedy was the death of Sarah’s puppy that her father had bought her after the divorce. Sarah’s dad knew how much Sarah loved dogs, and so he thought it would cheer her up to get her one to remember him by. The irony of this situation is that the puppy had been put to sleep by Sarah’s mother, the one trying to forget about Sarah’s father and how bad she fucked up her marriage. Sarah’s mother was selfish at times, and the worst part about it is that her mother knew how much Sarah loved that dog. It was a piece of Sarah’s father but that was exactly what peeled at the anger of her mother. But, the most shocking event was the death of Cassie.

Cassie was part of Sarah’s past. She wasn’t around very often because she was sick, but she was important to Sarah. Sarah and Cassie were un-seperatable when they were younger; they lived in each other’s houses. They loved each other like sisters; they fought each other like sisters that is, until Cassie got sick. It was two years before Sarah’s parents decided to get a divorce. Sarah called Cassie one day to chill and Cassie’s mother answered the phone telling Sarah she could not come out. She was sick with mono. Sarah understood and found some other friends to chill with. Cassie was sick with mono for a week in bed. While she was sick, Sarah was developing new friendships and bonds with others. Everything was fine until Cassie woke to know nothing. She didn’t know where she was, she didn’t know who she was. Cassie’s mother panicked and called the hospital. Cassie ended up having a rare disease that was eating away her brain. The only way to stop this murderous disease was to put Cassie on steroids. She turned into a balloon, but that wasn’t the worst part. Cassie wasn’t allowed to come to school anymore, she had to stay home because her immune system was weaker than an infants. Anything could kill her, but it wouldn’t because she was Sarah’s friend and people close to Sarah don’t die. The ending came and wasn’t how Sarah wanted it to be. It ended with death. The worst part about it was that Sarah was Cassie’s only friend that would visit when she was sick. Sarah was the only person Cassie was connected to outside her world of captivity. And Sarah failed her, left her to be miserable and alone because Sarah had important things to do like get drunk on Friday with her back stabbing friends.

            Sarah became angry remembering this. She knew she left Cassie to rot. Sarah didn’t even talk to those friends anymore. They moved on to their next victims because she dulled their knives after catching on to their plans of attack. They weren’t real friends, not like Cassie. Every small childhood memory was filled with Cassie, which means it was filled with pain. Sarah cried some more and stared back up at the ceiling. There was a web in the corner of her room, she felt like she was caught in a web. She felt like a victim to everything. She stared down at her wrists and outlined the scars. She used to cut her wrists. It was after her failure at death with swallowing her depression pills. It was one way to block the pain because the pain was too much.

Pain is something that is intolerable. Every human knows this. Losing something you love is painful as predicted. Losing things you love, along with passion for everything else you may have loved before, is what the most intolerable pain is. This was Sarah’s pain. Instead of feeling love, happiness, and excitement, you not necessarily feel pain, hurt, and guilt anymore because soon it forms into numbness. You feel nothing. Sarah hates to feel sorry for herself; she tries to avoid it as much as possible.

Sarah knows that there are always going to be starving kids in Africa. She knows that there are other people out there with bigger problems. It is not the attention is looking for; it is just someone or something to give her hope. She needs something to grab onto, to keep her from falling into the darkness. She knows that she can’t get anything back. She knows that these creases are here to stay and that they won’t ever go away. Sarah begins to have terrible thoughts about life and death. Coincidentally, her phone vibrates. It’s Hannah. She sent Sarah a text. Sarah read it: “Life is like an onion: you peel off one layer at a time and sometimes you cry”. Sarah smiles and texts Hannah back using her dry humor.

“Fuck onions. Good Night.” Hannah always sends Sarah little texts. It is the way of secretly being there for one another without having to share what is really wrong. It wasn’t enough to save Sarah from the pain, but it was enough to keep her going today, Sarah promised Hannah she would. Tomorrow, she will have to see.