A few years ago, I went grocery shopping with my boyfriend at the pristine supermarket in his lush, metropolitan slice of the city. 

“I’ll get the onions while you grab the red peppers,” he’d said to me, not realising that he was about to awaken a long-forgotten dream.

I perused the unfamiliar produce aisle in search of the shiniest, brightest red pepper of the day – a youthful attempt to subtly show my potential as a homemaker. Moments later, I’d found my prised pepper, and he’d come back holding perfectly sliced red onions, packaged in two neat, square plastic boxes.

“You buy your onions pre-sliced?” I’d asked, baffled by his choice. 

“Why would I go through the tears and trouble of cutting up the onions when I can just buy them prepped?” He’d replied, equally as baffled by my question.

A few years earlier, while at my middle-school best friend’s house, I’d witnessed her mother asking the helper, Mary, to run to the supermarket and buy pre-sliced lettuce to make some salad for dinner. I’d gone home and told my mother the story, who’d shaken her head and said:

“Some people have life way too easy.”

I’d nodded my head, feigning knowledge of what a hard life entailed at 13 years of age. 

Secretly, almost shamefully, I dreamt of running to the supermarket and buying sliced lettuce for my home, too.

For years, I’d yearned for an easy life. A life that seemed to shine with an effortless glow and a breath of fresh air at all times. I didn’t want tearful eyes chopping onions and sliced fingers cutting green leaves. I loathed the thought of one day knocking my head against an open kitchen cabinet door and dissolving into sobs; not because it hurt, but because it was all too much. 

I wanted a sliced-produce-in-plastic-boxes life.

So I got married. I moved in with my boyfriend-turned-husband. We bought the sliced onions in their plastic packaging. We got pre-packaged salad leaves in bigger plastic boxes, too. And when they started rotting, untouched in their confinements because I had grown too comfortable to season and dress them, we stopped buying them altogether.

I’d felt some remorse, and then none at all. The world was easy; life was simple.

That is, until last week when I searched and searched and searched for my beloved pre-sliced box of comfort to no avail.

In a 6-pm-and-still-no-dinner-cooked haste, I ordered a kilo of whole, unpeeled, unsliced onions, the only option my supermarket had in stock for those who were too late for the morning’s freshly packaged delivery.

They arrived looking muddied, dirty, and intimidating. 

Biting the bullet, I took to the first onion with a sharp knife. Tears welled up in my eyes. I retrieved a second onion from the drawer. The first tear made the leap from my face to the chopping board. I reached for a third. And then a fourth. And before I knew it, I’d gone through the whole entire bag of onions.

It suddenly dawned on me; I could chop these onions however big or small I wanted. I could throw them in my blender and blitz them to liquid. I could even bite into them whole if I so desired.

My eyes burnt but my heart felt… free.

In my daydream of a pre-sliced, pre-chopped, pre-prepared life, I’d forgotten the joys of the process. I’d forgone the feeling of achievement as you wipe the last hot, burning tear off your face and triumphantly slide the sliced uneven pieces of onion into the sizzling pan.

Why go through the tears of cutting up the onions when I can just buy them prepped?

Well, because sometimes, that also means giving up the immeasurable happiness of the in-between; messy, painful, and chaotically beautiful.