You are too much, but you better be.

As a young girl I always had this weird feeling in the back of my mind. On paper I knew I had good intentions and I had a good personality, but there was a hum of this voice that constantly scolded everything I did. You may know what I’m talking about. Anytime I did something slightly imperfect or embarrassing I got reassured with this nagging person in my brain saying I was weird, inconvenient, and too much. In childhood I didn’t have enough awareness as a child to put it into words, however it was still there. I was told who I was supposed to be and everything else I subconsciously discarded. If I wasn’t perfectly sweet or pretty I relived the moment in which I messed up. My cheeks would turn pink and I would squeeze my eyes shut in trying to forget. I have a shadow looming over me at all times, ready to ridicule me when I do anything outside of perfection.

This shadow took over more space in middle school, which is the worst time period of any girl's life, and I decided I was going to form a version of me that I wanted to be. She was cool and relaxed. She said all the right things, but didn’t say too much. She never got weird looks from her friends and her heart never stopped when she thought about past mistakes. This was not who I was but I forced it to happen. After a year of trying to beat myself into being loved, I succeeded in creating the fake personality I wanted. I rarely talked. I went to summer camp that year and with my sworn silence I found it hard to make friends, which my whole childhood I did not struggle with. My first thought was congrats coco! You’ve succeeded in getting rid of your personality.

When my lack of a real personality didn’t make me automatically loved, I realized it was all a scam. I’ve spent the years since tearing away every belief I have about myself that isn’t true. However, there is still this voice panicking over every imperfection. In my attempts to get rid of it I have realized that while one day it might go away, it is still very normal for it to be there and nothing it says is true. Ever. I’ve learned that when you think you need to change yourself to be loved it has the opposite effect. You need to make no effort to be worthy of love, other than being who you know you are. Go back to who you were as a child before the world tried to tell you who you are. You’ll find people who love and care about that child in a way your family or past friendships might have not. You would not be on this earth if you could not be loved, but trying to mold your personality into a movie character with calculated flaws that are somehow aesthetic is not the way to find your people.

The shadow still looms but I’m realizing it is just a mixture of the voices of everyone who I don’t speak to anymore. That shadow is full of the voices of small minded people who didn’t know how to handle who I was. I am too much but I better be. I am on a beautiful planet full of music, art, life, and joy and I will not spend my time here pretending that I am unfazed by that.