Onions and Oranges and Alien Crafts

I started the diet. I want to call it the ‘new eating program’ or something else, something less oppressive than ‘diet’ – but the fact is, I started the diet.

This was a step forward, more significant than it seemed. For so many months, after Mr Smith discarded his body, I didn’t see any need to care for mine – to care for it would be to commit to continuing to live, and I just didn’t see the point in that.

But the months turned into a year and more, and the seasons turned and turned again. Life went on, and I was still in it. I was in it, in a body that struggled to serve its purpose. This was a body I didn’t recognize as mine, and being in it felt like trying to navigate a world both surreal and familiar, from the inside of an alien craft.

Everything had changed, just as everything had stayed the same. I had no choice but to stay in this life, for now, and like it or not, I had a responsibility to this alien craft that had continued to host me despite the months of denial, neglect and outright abuse. It should have evicted me by now, but it hadn’t, and I was bound to be grateful.

So, the diet. I felt strong enough, I really did. I’d done the work. I’d peeled away layer after layer of grief and I’d reached the core of this bitter onion that Life had presented to me. It was still raw but it didn’t always make me cry anymore. Now it was time to step back into the world, and to step back into it in a body that fitted me again. It was time to commit to this alien craft, to consciously transform it into a flesh-and-blood representation of the new me; the me who is forever changed by this one devastating event.

I was ready: I’d studied the menu plan, made the shopping list and cleared out everything not conducive to this renewal of self. And with a pioneering spirit, I prepared my breakfast. A new phase had begun.

Then, later in the morning came the orange incident, and unexpected layers of that big, ripe, tear-inducing onion. It was the orange incident that showed me that there is no core in the center – at least, not one that I’ve managed to reach yet in the months of endless peeling.

Passing the bowl in the hallway, my hand reached out – a reflex action in search of fruit, but there was no fruit in the bowl, because I’d prepared in advance. I’d removed all possible temptation. But I so wanted an orange.

And in the moment of wanting an orange I knew that it wasn’t the orange I wanted. I knew that the neglect of my body hadn’t just come from not caring enough to care for it. It had also been from wanting oranges and other things to put in my mouth, like a helpless baby sucking a thumb.

The other things I thought I wanted were less wholesome than oranges and it was easier to leave them behind as I committed to change. An orange was okay though, I thought; oranges are good for you.

Well, they are, of course, but oranges have sugar, and they have calories. And it all adds up when reaching for one becomes a reflex.

So I couldn’t eat an orange. There were no oranges in the bowl. And the obvious became obvious and I knew why I wanted the orange.

I didn’t want the orange. I wanted Mr Smith. I wanted to feel his arms around me a hundred times a day – and especially during the night. I wanted his hand to hold while we walked the dogs in the woods. I wanted to hear his soft words and I wanted to laugh with him. The oranges and less wholesome things had been packed into the alien vessel to fill the empty spaces he left – while the empty spaces stayed stubbornly empty and the vessel expanded.

The empty spaces couldn’t be filled with oranges, because they don’t belong to the world that contains oranges. They belong to the world that contains loving arms and hands to hold and soft words and laughter.

Those spaces can never be filled with oranges and less wholesome things. They can’t even be filled with the love of others, no matter how powerful and no matter how sensitively offered. They can’t be filled with the despair of those others, also loved but loved in different ways – they can’t be filled with the pain they feel when they can’t fill the spaces.

They can’t be filled. And since I’ve committed to restoring the vessel so that it’s less alien and more mine, and since I’ve agreed to carry on living in it, I’m tasked now with the accepting of those spaces.

The sighting of the spaces stings my eyes, again, as another layer of the onion is peeled away. I sense that there will be more layers in the future, and I trust that they will be less pungent as I learn to live with the spaces, allowing the emptiness. As I do, there will be oranges, and sometimes less wholesome things, and the devastated new me will, one day, be ready to receive them for what they are.