There are phrases that haunt a body.
“Too much.”
“Not enough.”
I’ve lived in the echo between the two,
stretching and shrinking,
trying to mold myself into something — someone —
worthy of staying.
In early childhood, I learned to monitor myself.
The volume of my laugh. The weight of my questions.
The texture of my emotions.
Joy was too loud. Sadness was too inconvenient.
My silence was praised. My expression, often too sharp to be safe.
By adolescence, the contradictions became doctrine.
Be small, but also remarkable.
Be obedient, but not voiceless.
Be kind, but never vulnerable.
Be a “strong Black woman” — even when you’re quietly bleeding inside.
Be enough — but not so much that you become a burden.
And so I became a master of translation —
constantly decoding the room,
editing myself mid-thought,
swallowing entire oceans of feeling
so I could make others more comfortable.
But no matter how much I concealed,
no matter how much of myself I sacrificed at the altar of acceptability,
someone always found a new way to imply I was too much
or not enough.
Too sensitive. Too bold. Too emotional. Too ambitious.
Too broken.
Too real.
Not smart enough. Not attractive enough. Not agreeable enough.
Not healed enough.
Not worth staying for.
I’ve carried both verdicts like invisible ink on my skin.
And maybe that’s the quiet tragedy of it all —
being expected to hold two opposing truths
without ever being taught how to reconcile them.
It’s lonely, this middle place.
This body that has been both craved and abandoned.
This voice that has been both celebrated and shut down.
This heart that has been both too open and too guarded.
But I’m tired.
I’m so tired of being a shape-shifter.
Of bending toward people who would never twist themselves in return.
So I’m calling it.
I’m not too much.
I’m not not enough.
I’m just… me.
And if that’s unsettling to someone,
it is not my burden to carry anymore.
Let it be unsettling.
Let it be too loud, too tender, too honest, too expansive.
Let me be.
Because this body —
this soul, this voice, this story —
deserves to take up space
without needing to apologize
for its volume or its ache
#MentalHealth #SuicidalIdeation #Depression #Anxiety #Bipolar1 #PTSD #MightyPoets #substack #ADHD #youarenotalone
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