I Care Too Much
Do you ever remember the first time you realized you cared what other people thought of you?
I do. I was in seventh grade.
There were two people in my life growing up who regularly called me obnoxious. Frequently enough that I started to believe them. I didn’t fully understand what the word meant, but I understood the feeling it left behind. Something about me was too much. Something about me needed to be managed.
So I started managing it.
I became self-conscious about how excited I got over things. How loud I was. I started doing this internal check every time I felt joy rising up. Is this too much? Is this embarrassing? Am I being obnoxious right now?
The thing is, joy came easily to me. Getting a sweet treat after dinner? That was worth breaking into song. Two sleepovers in a row at my best friend’s house? I was literally screaming in the car when my parents said yes. I was abundantly, unself-consciously expressive. I couldn’t help it.
I loved this about myself. Until I didn’t. Or rather, until I was taught not to.
It wasn’t one moment that changed things. It was a slow accumulation. Being the youngest sibling and sometimes feeling invisible. Watching other kids start to perform composure like it was something to aspire to. Noticing that the adults around me didn’t really do the screaming-in-the-car thing anymore.
And so the “self-editing” started.
At first it was small. Obsessing over my hair, wondering if the cute boy in third period thought I was cute. All the normal stuff one might expect, but it grew. I started monitoring myself around people I barely knew, terrified they found me annoying. And then, when my grandma was dying, I remember thinking I was crying too much. That I was being too dramatic about it. That the depth of my grief was somehow embarrassing. That having big emotions meant I was unstable, not that I was human.
I let my light dim for the sake of other people’s comfort. My happy emotions especially, because those seemed to be the most “disruptive” my first grade teacher told me so directly, more than once.
But here is what I know now, from the other side of a lot of quieting myself. My expressiveness was never a flaw. It is the reason I can go deep with strangers in ten minutes. It is the reason I cry at commercials and mean it. It is the reason I’ve spent my whole life drawn to children, who haven’t learned yet to apologize for feeling things.
I’ve worked with kids my entire adult life. As a nanny, a teacher, a camp counselor. And I see my younger self in them. Overjoyed about five more minutes at the park. Screaming with excitement over a spontaneous playdate. Completely, unselfconsciously alive in their own experience.
When I see those kids, I feel something protective rise up in me. Don’t touch that. Don’t teach them to shrink it. Let them feel it all the way to the edges.
Because that’s all I ever wanted someone to do for me.
I just wanted someone to look at little me, the loud one, the obnoxious one, the one who cried too much and screamed of joy and couldn’t contain herself, and say: you are perfect exactly as you are.
Because when I look back at her now? She was.
We are these kids. We are the ones who learned to turn it down. This is just a reminder that we don’t have to keep doing that.
If you want to go deeper on this, this week’s meditation is all about exploring your emotional edges. It’s a good one to sit with after reading this.