It didn’t happen to me.

You know that smell your hands get if you don’t wash them the very second you cut onions? That really bitter stale smell that just won’t come off for days?

It happened to a friend of mine.

And you know the look you get on your face every time you smell your hands, because you just can’t help but cringe?

She couldn’t have known it was coming.

Imagine that smell as a feeling. A constant, curdling feeling in the pit of your stomach that just won’t go away.

I didn’t know it was coming either. But that doesn’t matter. It didn’t happen to me.

Every time you remember your stomach, you cringe.

“Don’t leave her.”

You can only wash your hands so many times.

“Please don’t leave her.”

The smell, at some tiny level, is always there.

You know, maybe it wasn’t her that it happened to.

Even if it isn’t, it’s waiting for you around the corner.

Reconsidering it, maybe it was me, after all.

Waiting for the next time you cut onions.