You Are Not Too Much. You Just Found Too Little.
Someone told me I was too much once.
Too intense. Too emotional. Too honest. Too loud about the things I felt. Too unwilling to pretend everything was fine when everything was not fine.
I spent a long time believing them.
I made myself quieter. More manageable. I learned to feel things privately and present only the edited version. I got very good at "I'm fine" delivered with exactly the right amount of conviction. I took up less space. I asked for less. I needed less, or at least I performed needing less, which is a different thing entirely but looks the same from the outside.
And I thought that was growth.
It was not growth. It was disappearing slowly, in increments small enough that nobody noticed, including me.
The Too Much Story
Here is what actually happened when someone called you too much.
They encountered the full version of you and it exceeded their capacity. Their capacity for emotional depth, for honesty, for the kind of intimacy that requires actually showing up. And rather than acknowledge that this was a limitation of theirs, they handed it back to you as a problem of yours.
You are too much.
Which is a very elegant way of saying: I cannot hold this, and I would prefer not to examine why.
You believed them because it is easier to believe you are the problem than to accept that the person in front of you simply did not have enough room for everything you are.
But you were not too much. You were too much for them. Those are not the same thing.
What Too Little Actually Looks Like
Too little looks like someone who changes the subject when you go somewhere real.
Someone who is fine with you when you are fun and easy and require nothing, but goes quiet or gets uncomfortable the moment you bring something true into the room.
Someone who mistakes your depth for drama. Your feelings for manipulation. Your need for connection for neediness.
Someone who makes you feel, over and over and in ways both large and small, that the full version of you is too much to ask anyone to deal with.
That is not a you problem. That is a fit problem. And fit problems are solved by finding better fits, not by making yourself smaller.
What Enough Actually Feels Like
I want to tell you what it feels like when you find people who have enough room.
It feels strange at first. Suspicious, almost. You say something real and wait for the subject to change and it does not change. You need something and you ask for it and the person does not seem burdened by the asking. You are having a hard time and you do not have to perform fine and nobody treats your honesty as an inconvenience.
You keep waiting for the moment where you are too much. It does not come.
That is not because you made yourself smaller. It is because you found bigger.
You are not too much. The world is full of people with enough room. You just have not always been in the right rooms.
Go find the right rooms.
When did someone make you feel like too much? And did you believe them?
rise · believe · fly 🪶
From the Ashes She is for the woman in the middle of it. Not after. If this found you today, you are exactly where you are supposed to be.