I Am Too Much.

I was in an abusive relationship. And I am still integrating that experience. Part of recovering from abuse is putting your self-image back together piece by piece, projection by projection. When someone who was supposed to love you spends years telling you who you are, those labels don't just disappear when the relationship ends. They live in the body. They show up in how you move through the world, how you respond to being seen, how much space you allow yourself to take up.

Rebuilding your self-image means taking those words out of your being and giving them somewhere else to live. Sometimes that’s via conversation. Sometimes it’s via creative ritual. Writing is the way I metabolize a lot of shadow material.

I write. I give it to the air. And I become free.

These words don’t belong to me. And they don’t want to live in me anymore. So today I write to free myself from the projections of a very sick human being. This is not an essay. It’s an exorcism.

Protecting Yourself From Me…Is Childish

You want to use protection? That’s childish. You’re treating me like I’m some kind of threat. Grow up. You hired an attorney to divorce me? You’re being dramatic. Do you hear yourself? You’re ridiculous.

I digested these projections. They calcified in my throat burying my voice underneath. Quieting me. Taking me under. I swallowed doubt and for years it landed right in the unformed land of my psyche where my self had yet to solidify. But I am solid now.

I am loud now.

Asking Me To Be There For You…Is Controlling

I am a second generation eldest daughter. Asking for help is the bane of my existence (working on that). For years, I confused having valid human needs with being controlling because I was married to someone who saw my dignity as an inconvenience.

I could not be sick, sad or in need. But when I was needed, I didn’t bat an eye. Didn’t flinch at the multiple surgeries that required bathing, encouraging + uplifting the same individual who wouldn’t even pick up medicine for me. And I thought I was controlling because he said so.

I was never controlling. I was just alive and with someone who didn’t think I deserved to be.

You Are “Too Much”

This is the ineffable wound. There are too many memories, too many insults, too many cut downs. Just…too many. I could be combing my soul for an eternity trying to name all the ways I was conditioned to see myself as too much.

The most useful mechanism I know for metabolizing a “too much” projection is to eat it. Yes I am too much. Yes, I am.

And?

How exactly do I benefit by being less? Why exactly should I delight in being the right size for an idiot? I’m not idiot size.

I am too much.

And I like that.

-🤘🏽Britnei