I have this on good authority. I've been told by a wide variety of people, in a large number of situations. Sometimes it's said with fondness by someone shocked but laughing over what I dared say--out loud--in public. Sometimes it is spoken in specific language, that pinpoints a specific trait. Too loud, too angry, too emotional, too intense...
Too much.
The term, as it stands, is obviously relative. I mean, it's not an empirical quantity, that can be easily weighed and measured. No, it must be something made obvious only by comparison. Someone else is the appropriate amount, and I am more than.
Therefore I must be too much.
But I fill myself perfectly, don't I? I am not spilling out, overflowing the boundaries of me, like a swollen river after a rainstorm. I am contained within myself, and I do not strain at my own borders.
How, then, can I be too much?
Perhaps... perhaps what you really mean is that I am too much for you. That my tongue trips too quickly for you to follow, that my thoughts span a broader horizon than is comfortable for you, that my willingness to feel as I feel and not as others would choose frightens you.
Perhaps you mean that my voice is too clear, my words too straightforward, my attitude too unabashed for you.
But if that is the case, and I am too much for you, perhaps all that really means is that you are too little for me.
You are too little.
Most of the world is, too little. But then you've always known what you were up against :). A joy in my life is you staying too much.
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