I have been “too much” for as long as I can remember—
too loud, too sensitive, too easy to temper.
Too many feelings, too many needs, too broken,
too many words to read, too many left unspoken.
Too much for the ones who should remain
too much truth, too much raw, ‘too much shame’
Too much hurt, too much pain & darkness to hold,
so I learned to need less & simply do as I was told.
Too independent. Too stubborn. Too strong.
Too quick to call something out when I know it is wrong.
Too colorful, too passionate, too fucking loud—
too much when I’m broken, too much when I’m proud.
I’m too sick sometimes. Too tired. Too sore.
Too many doctors, prescriptions, and “what now?”s in store.
Too many plans canceled because my body said no,
too much uncertainty everywhere that I go.
Too complicated. Too guarded. Too aware.
I overthink silence because silence meant beware.
I notice the shift in a text, a voice, a face,
I instinctively start preparing myself to be replaced.
I know I can spiral. I know I can doubt.
I know sometimes hopelessness shuts all the light out.
I know loving me isn’t all sunshine and ease—
sometimes it’s sitting beside me while I beg my mind, please.
I know I’m a lot. Believe me, I know.
I’ve watched people love me—then decide they need to go.
From the woman who made me to the man just passing through,
I keep hearing some version of, “There’s just TOO much of all of you.”
So forgive the flinch if you promise you won’t leave,
if you say “unconditional” like I’m just supposed to believe.
Forgive how I search for the catch in your love,
the fine print, the limit, the enough is enough.
Because “I love you” sounds beautiful—but I’ve heard it before,
Usually just before the end of a chapter and the closing of a door.
And if you tell me, “There is nothing you could do that would make me abandon you,”
some little girl inside me still whispers, They all thought that once, too.
I want to believe you. God, I desperately do.
I’m learning not everyone leaves when they see all of you.
But loving me means understanding why my heart sometimes flinches and starts to pull away.
it learned love had conditions & you must shrink to fit; that’s the only way they stay.
So yes—I am too much.
Too much heart. Too much fight.
Too much darkness. Too much light.
Too much history. Too much hope underneath.
Too much fucking resilience for everything that tried breaking me.
And maybe I’ll always flinch when someone promises to stay.
Maybe “unconditional” will scare me until I know you mean exactly what you say.
. . .
So I’m done cutting pieces away just to make myself easier to choose.
. . .
If I’m too much please go find less – there is no more of myself that I’m willing to lose.
– Desiree Angelica Young
I have been “too much” for people for most of my life.
Too loud.
Too emotional.
Too sensitive.
Too opinionated.
Too independent.
Too needy.
Too complicated.
Too sick.
Too strong.
Too broken.
Too intense.
Too honest.
Too fucking much.
The adjectives have changed depending on the person and the chapter, but the message underneath them has remained remarkably consistent:
Could you maybe just be…less?
And for a very long time, I tried.
God, did I try.
I learned early that some people are much more comfortable loving you when your needs don’t inconvenience them.
So I became useful.
I became funny.
I became independent.
I became the girl who could handle it.
I learned how to read a room before I ever learned how to feel safe inside one. I learned to notice the smallest change in someone’s voice, expression, energy, or behavior and immediately start calculating what I had done wrong.
I learned how to make myself easier to keep.
That lesson started long before romantic relationships ever entered the picture.
It started in a childhood where love never felt like a place I could simply exist.
There were conditions. Expectations. Silence. Things we didn’t talk about because acknowledging them made other people uncomfortable.
Even my pain could somehow become too much.
So the little girl inside me started learning a dangerous equation:
If people are uncomfortable with pieces of me, I should remove those pieces.
Be quieter.
Need less.
Cry somewhere private.
Stop talking about what hurts.
Don’t ask for reassurance.
Don’t make people uncomfortable with your truth.
And whatever you do, don’t become so difficult to love that they leave.
Except people left anyway.
That’s the part nobody tells you when you become exceptionally skilled at abandoning yourself to prevent everyone else from abandoning you.
It doesn’t work.
You can cut yourself into bite-sized pieces and someone will still decide they aren’t hungry.
You can become quieter, easier, prettier, stronger, more successful, more independent, more accommodating, less needy, less emotional, less complicated—and someone can still leave.
I know.
I have tried.
I have changed my body beyond recognition.
I have survived things I once thought would kill me.
I have built a career out of being capable, dependable, organized and able to handle approximately 947 things simultaneously while making a joke somewhere around number 683.
I became a leader.
A fixer.
A caretaker.
A professional plate-spinner.
I became the woman people call when everything is on fire because apparently my spiritual gift is walking into chaos wearing heels and asking, “Okay, what the fuck happened?”
And underneath her?
There is still a little girl wondering whether being useful enough might finally make her impossible to leave.
That realization hurts.
Because I am incredibly self-aware.
Sometimes painfully so.
I know I can be a lot.
I know my personality takes up space.
I laugh loudly. I love fiercely. I have opinions. I ask questions. I notice things. I feel everything at a volume that occasionally makes me wish my emotional control panel came with a fucking mute button.
I am colorful and complicated.
I am dresses and heels and fake nails and leopard print.
I am laughter in inappropriate moments and tears I desperately try to hide.
I am confidence and insecurity living in the same body.
I am capable of leading an entire room while simultaneously needing someone I trust to remind me that I don’t have to carry everything alone.
I am a walking paradox.
And then there is my health.
Loving me sometimes means plans change.
It means my body doesn’t always cooperate with the life my brain has meticulously color-coded.
There are good days.
There are painful days.
There are exhausted days.
There are days when simply existing inside my body requires more energy than anyone around me can see.
There are days when I can conquer the world before lunch.
And there are days when conquering the world looks a whole lot more like surviving until bedtime.
That can feel like “too much,” too.
Especially when you have spent your entire life believing your value lives somewhere inside what you can do for everyone else.
And then there is my mind.
The overthinking.
The fear.
The grief.
The old wounds.
The newer ones.
The moments when hopelessness gets louder than reason.
The nights when my brain insists on reopening boxes I very specifically placed on the highest fucking shelf.
There are pieces of my past that still live in my nervous system even when my logical brain knows I am safe.
Which is why there is something almost painfully ironic about being loved well now.
Because when someone tells me,
“I love you unconditionally.”
I flinch.
When someone says,
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Part of me immediately starts preparing for them to go.
When someone tells me there is nothing I could say, do, feel, confess, struggle with, or become that would make them abandon me, I desperately want to believe them.
And another part of me quietly whispers:
They all thought that once, too.
That is the piece of healing I don’t think people talk about enough.
Sometimes receiving healthy love is terrifying when unhealthy love raised you.
Sometimes kindness feels suspicious.
Consistency feels temporary.
Safety feels like something you shouldn’t get too comfortable inside.
And unconditional love sounds beautiful right up until someone offers it directly to you.
Then suddenly you’re standing there emotionally holding the receipt, looking for the return policy.
But something is changing.
Slowly.
Messily.
Imperfectly.
I am beginning to notice the people who never ask me to become smaller.
The people who don’t require me to perform for my place in their lives.
The people who don’t only love the loud, funny, competent version of me.
They can sit beside the quiet one, too.
The exhausted one.
The scared one.
The one whose wings occasionally feel too broken to fly.
The one who doesn’t have the answer.
The one who cannot fix it.
The one who finally admits:
I don’t got this.
And instead of stepping backward, they step closer and remind me:
WE got this.
Those people are teaching me something I should have learned decades ago.
Real love does not require amputation.
The right people do not hand you scissors and point toward the pieces of yourself they would prefer you remove.
They don’t ask you to lower your volume so they can tolerate your presence.
They don’t make you earn softness through usefulness.
They don’t punish vulnerability.
They don’t weaponize your history.
They don’t make your illness an inconvenience or your emotions an obligation.
They don’t love you despite the complicated pieces.
They understand those pieces are part of the whole person standing in front of them.
And I am finally beginning to understand my value to those people, too.
Not because I am useful.
Not because I can lead.
Not because I can fix things.
Not because I survived.
Not because I am strong.
Not because I can make everybody laugh while my own heart is breaking.
Just because I am me.
All. Of. It.
That concept still feels foreign sometimes.
I’m learning.
I’m still going to flinch occasionally when someone reaches for me.
I’m probably still going to analyze a period at the end of a text like it contains classified intelligence.
I will still have moments when someone gets quiet and my brain immediately opens a PowerPoint presentation titled “17 Reasons They Are Definitely About to Abandon You.”
Healing apparently did not remove my flair for drama.
Rude.
But I am learning to stop running before anyone gets the opportunity to stay.
I am learning to let loving hands reach for me without immediately searching them for scissors.
I am learning that being self-aware does not mean constantly identifying which pieces of myself I should change to become easier for someone else.
Sometimes self-awareness means recognizing:
I am not too much. We simply may not be a match.
And that distinction has changed something inside me.
Because I have spent enough years trying to become someone people would choose.
I have spent enough years grieving people who couldn’t meet me where I was.
Enough years wondering what I should have done differently.
Enough years cutting pieces away.
I am 37 years into this story now.
I have survived childhood.
Loss.
Trauma.
Illness.
Heartbreak.
Friendships ending.
A marriage ending.
Versions of my life ending that I genuinely believed would last forever.
And somehow, the story is still being written.
Actually, I think some of the best chapters haven’t even happened yet.
There is a book with my name on it.
There are rooms I haven’t spoken in yet.
There are people I haven’t met who may someday need to hear that being raised by a village can teach you how to lead one.
There are places I haven’t traveled.
People I haven’t loved yet.
Versions of myself I haven’t met.
There is still ink in the pen.
And I refuse to spend the chapters ahead editing myself into a character everyone else finds easier to digest.
The people meant to stand in my village won’t need the abridged version.
They’ll get the whole damn book.
The loud chapters.
The painful ones.
The funny ones.
The messy ones.
The ones where I lead.
The ones where I fall apart.
The ones where I am still learning how to let someone else help me back up.
Maybe I am a lot.
Actually—
I know I am.
I love hard.
I feel deeply.
I fight fiercely.
I dream ridiculously big.
I carry scars.
I carry hope.
I carry grief.
I carry a personality that has never once entered a room quietly.
And I am finally learning that the goal was never to become less.
The goal was to stop handing pieces of myself to people who required less of me in order to love me.
So I’m done cutting pieces away just to make myself easier to choose.
I’ve lost too much of myself doing that already.
And if all of me is “too much” for you—
please, go find less.
Because I’ve got no more of me to lose.
