Warehouse of Onions
I’ve spent decades trying to be smaller. Easy. Able to fly under the radar and not cause problems. Not be too much. Actually, I think I’ve spent most of my life this way. It seems I’m not very good at being small.
I thought that by a few years post-divorce, my old patterns would be all healed up with a bow and put away on a shelf in the garage with the rest of my old life. But the onion continues to peel and I keep finding deeper things that need work and healing. I guess as I get safer and more healed, I recognize that there are more things I can work on to become even more comfortable and healthy.
I went to urgent care last week because my eye was randomly swollen shut. The PA who saw me was a very nice woman. Friendly. As she took my medical history, she made a comment. “Wow. You don’t look like someone who takes so many medications.”
Instant judgment. Instant too-muchness. Instant self-editing.
I don’t need this much medication, I thought. What can I eliminate? I decided to go off the medication that keeps my immune system in check so I don’t get constant cold sore outbreaks. Seemed like a good idea at the time. I’ll be fine, I told myself.
I wanted to look like someone who needed less.
Meanwhile, the eyelid problems escalated. Antibiotics. Warm compresses. No real improvement. Then my eye doctor explained that among other things, I have ocular rosacea- a severe inflammatory issue affecting my eyelids. It will take weeks, if not months, to regain control and normalcy. And my lash extensions- while not the cause of this, were not helping matters and had to temporarily go. Along with all eye makeup.
Um, what now??
Since shortly after my divorce, I’ve had lash extensions. I LOVE them. I love them so much I’ve vowed to never stop them and be buried with them when I die at age 104. I just adore them. I feel confident, pretty, put together with them. Now my poor, sad eyes have been stripped naked. One lid has a swollen lump on it that may need to be SCRAPED OUT by the ophthalmologist, and they are an inflamed dumpster fire. Talk about humbling.
The other day, I felt like a depressed potato. For no reason I could figure out. I should have been happy and calm. Nothing bad was happening in my life. I tried to do things. I tried to get up and be productive. But my body just felt drawn to the couch like gravity. So I finally gave in. I just lumped there most of the day. I felt emotional and gray and exhausted. For no reason I could understand.
This morning I woke up with a cold sore and it all became crystal clear. Yesterday was my immune system whispering to me that trouble was brewing. A fight was underway. Rest was needed. Without the medication I’d been taking, cold sores were being reactivated.
So here’s the truth.
A few years post divorce is not that long, considering what my body and heart carried simultaneously:
Marriage grief
Identity loss/rebuilding
Chronic illness
Parenting stress
Financial pressure
EMS stress exposure
Learning safe love
Learning to receive instead of only perform
Discovering my own needs after years of suppressing them
That’s not one onion. That’s an entire warehouse of onions. Which is rude, frankly.
And sometimes the later stages of healing feel harder emotionally because survival adrenaline fades. In the beginning, there’s crisis momentum:
Leave.
Move.
Get through.
Function.
Rebuild.
Then eventually life quiets enough that your nervous system starts saying, “Ok, now can we talk about the deeper stuff?”
Which is often when:
Grief surfaces
Body symptoms surface
Attachment wounds surface
Exhaustion surfaces
Vulnerability surfaces
Intimacy triggers surface
Identity questions surface
That doesn’t erase the progress. It points to it.
The version of me from years ago may not have had enough safety, support, or awareness to notice some of these patterns and body responses. I’m seeing them now because I’m no longer fully consumed by survival.
I also think there’s grief in realizing that I did all that work…and I’m still human.
Still tender sometimes. Still triggered sometimes. Still inflamed sometimes. Still scared sometimes. Still unraveling old conditioning sometimes.
My nervous system has spent years overriding signals:
Keep going.
Help everyone.
Work the shift.
Parent through it.
Push through exhaustion.
Function anyway.
But I am different now. Deeply different. Not because I became perfectly healed. But because I stopped abandoning myself while healing.
About that comment by the PA. That was a pretty loaded statement. What is someone who needs medications supposed to look like? You can be someone who…
Works full time
Looks vibrant
Is emotionally insightful
And still has a body that needs support.
I responded to the PA’s comment with an old emotional pattern of the instinct to immediately reduce my own needs when I sense judgement.
That’s a very old survival adaptation.
I’ll need less.
I’ll take up less space.
I’ll stop asking.
I’ll stop relying on support.
I’ll prove I’m ok.
But bodies aren’t impressed by self-denial. Annoyingly, they just become symptomatic again. I don’t have to earn the right to feel better by white-knuckling unnecessary suffering. I think I’ve spent a long time trying to be “reasonable” about my own suffering. Minimizing it. Negotiating with it. Trying not to be dramatic. Trying not to need too much.
There is wisdom in responding to reality instead of forcing myself into some ideal of being the effortlessly healthy, low-maintenance woman who never needs support. The goal is not to become the woman who needs the least. The goal is a life where my body feels more stable, my nervous system feels safer, and I can actually live my life with less suffering.
A body that has carried as much as mine is probably not asking for perfection anymore. It’s asking for partnership.