For almost as long as I can remember I have felt like I am “too much” for most people. Maybe not most people, but many people. A great many people if I’m honest. 

And not the kind of too much that is seen as a good thing. Not like too much money or too much Swiss Chocolate.

I guess maybe I can’t really put my finger on the exact words for how I feel, but over time I keep coming back to those two words. “Too Much.”

Too opinionated.

Too loud.

Too passionate.

Too energetic.

Too type A.

Much too emotional.

Feel much too deeply.

A little too real.

Too honest.

Certainly too many expectations. Way too many expectations.

Too big to fit into that box.

Too small to fit into that one.

Cry too easily.

Too questioning. 

Too needy.

Too energetic.

Too optimistic.

Just. Too. Much.

I remember not very long ago at all really, a good friend of mine told me she overheard a couple of people chatting. She came up behind and beside them. They didn’t see her and maybe wouldn’t recognize her. Nothing bad was said at all. Truly nothing. Not a thing. But when she relayed the conversation she said “I cant quite put my finger on it, but I wanted you to know”. And it was true. Nothing derogatory to speak of at all. But I knew then, just like I knew when I was 8 or 14 or 21 or 34 or 42. I knew that what she was hearing at that moment in their conversation was that they felt just maybe I was “a little too much” at times.

It seems to be this theme in my life in many ways.

I remember at work doing one of those personality tests.  It sorted you into colors. Blue, Green, Orange and Gold.

Even then I remember feeling too blue.

(Blue had nothing to do with depression, it had to do with feelings).

Again.  Just. Too. Much.

But over time though I’ve truly learned to embrace my “too much”. I wouldn’t even necessarily say I argue with the validity of it. It’s a big part of who I am, and as I’ve grown older I’ve felt less need to try and change it or hide it.  My “too much” makes me who I am.

And its funny how sometimes we re-frame things in life through our experiences and as we age through our children. Because lately it occurred to me. 

Maybe it’s never been that I have been too much.

Maybe, its that sometimes others aren’t enough.

And I know that re-reading that it would be the perfect way to end a piece of writing.

It’s a powerful play on words.  

But it also sounds mean and that’s not at all how I intend it.

What I mean is this: maybe it’s not always me that needs to feel like I am “too” anything in this world that likes to put us in boxes … maybe, sometimes, the world could stand to have a little more “too” in it. A little more “much”.

Because sometimes there isn’t “enough” of all of those things I listed above. Maybe some of us have to bring a “little too much” to balance out the “sometimes not enough”.

Anyway.

I think that’s how I’ve learned to look at it.

Or atleast I’m trying.