You will be too much for some people. Those are not your people.
Me, the real me: I felt secure, felt confident, felt safe and felt seen. That is the me that I am. Despite this, I still found myself in a situation that initially felt safe to be in, but ended up not being. When I was 'called out' for being 'too me', it felt like an assault on my character, which quite rightly it was. I didn't know that at the time. It left me feeling utterly defeated, utterly out of place and utterly isolated.
I understood that I could be too much. I had been told that for the better part of my life. I understood it, but it hurt. I understood from a cognitive, psychological, and emotionally intelligent level that other people have a right to set their boundaries in place, but am I really that intolerable, that horrific, that scary? Is this really who I am? How do I navigate life authentically without offending others or letting myself down? 'Just be yourself.' Firstly, I wasn't aware that I had a choice, without entirely losing who I am. Secondly, I tried that. I did the 'brave' thing I feared. I tried, and thought they liked me, but they only liked parts of me. The parts that served them in the moment.
The save: I immediately chose to save what I had with these people; going back to hermit living felt like it would undo all the brave things I wanted to achieve. I intentionally put myself out there, I wanted to make friends, I gave them all of me, believing I had good, quality friendship to give. But they only wanted it for a finite moment of time, while it served their need, while they wanted the excitement, and when they didn't want it any longer, or they tired of me, they 'set their boundary'. I felt held hostage by a group of people I so desperately wanted to befriend, people I genuinely liked, who I thought liked me back.
The self-reflection: They didn't initially reject the outreach. They accepted, at a time when they could have declined. All the social cues were there. Did I really mess this up, again? How many times will I mess this up before I learn how to successfully and meticulously present a carefully curated version of nothingness? It's so hollow and empty, but if it made them happy and made me more acceptable, then maybe that's what I needed to do. So I did. I apologised, I said I was sorry, I owned up to 'my wrong'. I was, after all, wrong for just existing as myself. So I 'did the right thing'. And then I cried. I cried for two days straight, bashing myself for who I was, rehearsing how I would really get the best, hollowed-out version, and started strategising how I would seamlessly integrate this 'new me' without it seeming too different, because that would raise alarm and let them know that I might think their 'call out' was wrong. I didn't want them to feel bad. I didn't want them to feel like I was disagreeing with them. How utterly presumptuous it would be of me to have a different opinion of myself. I wanted to keep these 'friends', after all, so that would be counter-productive. But it felt wrong to me, and something felt off. After those two days of revisiting prior interactions repeatedly in my head about what I could have done differently and how I would do things differently, I started to buy into that narrative.
I really was too much. I needed to urgently 'unmuch' myself, essentially become less, dim the light and learn to be ok with this. It was time for me to accept this hollow version, own it and be ok with it. That was, after all, the only way I would be accepted. The real me was obviously unacceptable, and I needed to change that post haste. It was exhausting: the planning, the scheming, the curating, the just-enough excitement to seem real, while balancing the nothingness inside of me and making myself believe that it was fine to continue this as an ongoing way to live. It would be tiring, but who was I to argue. I had solved the problem. But did I really?
The moment of clarity: It was unkind, what they did. They didn't flinch at the thought of breaking my spirit. They thought only of their comfort levels. What if they, instead, had made themselves capable of accepting some of my 'too much'? What if I had expected them to? What if I had demanded that they just be ok? But that would be wrong. Wasn't that exactly what they were doing to me? It's the double standard that was making it feel off. The cognitive dissonance, created by me carefully orchestrating my behaviour and actions, left them completely free of any accountability for their actions. I had not demanded they change, so they could just continue to be them. No curating, no strategising, no losing sleep, no character assaults. They just got to be them. So why couldn't I? At this realisation, they were in fact becoming 'too much' for me, and the mere thought of the mental gymnastics and upkeep of this curated version of me exhausted me. So I stopped crying and I slept.
The awakening: I woke up with the groundbreaking realisation: these were not my people. What if there was a way I could respect their boundaries, while keeping myself safe, because I realised that this space was unsafe for me. They were unsafe. Not me. I wasn't intolerable, horrific, or scary. I had, after all, spent over 48 hours doing introspection. I replayed every interaction to make sure. If they had felt that way, then they would have declined the invitation. Were they faking it the whole time? And the timing. The timing gave it away. The timing was just after I had fully opened up and shared more of myself. More than they ever deserved, but I thought I was safe. In me sharing, they immediately put me in a box. They immediately classified me as less than, and they acted accordingly, no longer a peer to be respected and more like a subordinate to be managed. This was immediately followed by the character assaults, demands and 'boundaries'. But here's the catch: I'm more self-aware than them. They revealed more about themselves in their 'boundary setting' than I had ever revealed, and that changed everything.
Boundaries vs bullying: There's boundary-setting, and then there's wanting to mould someone into a version that's acceptable to you. The latter is bullying. Wanting someone to stay 'less than' so you can keep the power, that's control. In a healthy dynamic, everyone is equal. That was all I needed to know, and I decided to fight back with intention, but not in the traditional sense. Fighting had the potential to cause self-harm, it wasted energy, energy that I should reserve for myself. These people were quite obviously unable to peacefully co-exist with anyone who was different to them. Peaceful co-existence is something I had learnt to do years ago, and that I knew how to do well, and since I no longer wanted these people to like me, peaceful co-existence was exactly what I wanted. If it made them uncomfortable, then so be it. If peace felt uncomfortable to them, that was a character flaw in them. My purpose was not to change other people. They needed to do the work and change themselves, or not, but I stopped caring either way. As long as I was safe, they could be, do, or act how they chose. Fixing people was never part of the job description associated with living my life. This moment was everything.
The pivot: I gave them exactly what they wanted. They met me with disrespect, and I matched them with a watered-down version of me that wasn't a lie, just enough to co-exist from a distance and stay polite. I changed the dynamic. I changed the entire power-balance, and I stopped caring about how they would perceive it. Adapting wasn't inauthentic. It made me stronger, because I was adaptable. I had been adaptable for years, and I was comfortable doing so on my terms. It meant I got to be unapologetically me, without diminishing my morals. They wanted less, so I gave them less. I gave them close to nothing, by choice. These were not my people anyway, so there was no need for me to give them anything more than polite respect. Not because they deserved it, but because I deserve to exist in a peaceful world. Disrespect is not something I subscribe to, so why would I degrade myself to that? Just because they chose to be unkind doesn't mean I needed to. They were truly despicable humans. They were unsafe and uncaring, and I wanted no part of that.
The strategy, less is less: I would become as uninteresting, unresponsive, and emotionally flat as an inanimate object. Picture elevator music: I would be there, but purposely unremarkable, underwhelming, and unmemorable. Just enough to satisfy their need for less while keeping my real self for myself. I would give them basic, and withhold my main-character energy. This was exactly the extent of the energy they deserved; they made it clear in their 'boundaries', after all. I would become as useless as a flat tyre when you urgently need to be somewhere. They seek an emotional reaction and I refuse to give it to them. By denying access to my emotions, I will deny them the validation they so desperately need. I will prioritise my safety and disempower them, simultaneously.
The implementation: It's simpler than it sounds, because it requires me to do less, not more. I now trade my genuine interest for a flat vocabulary, consisting of: okay, yes, no, noted. And when I'm feeling particularly petty: noted with thanks. I keep my feelings, and the powerful, competent, confident person I really am, to myself. I limit the in-person moments where I can, and when I can't, I let my interactions be as dull as the conversation deserves. I don't perform attentiveness I don't feel; I let my eyes drift the way they naturally would when something genuinely bores me. And when I've had enough, I glance at the time, and mutter: 'I've got to get going'. We're done here. I intend to become so uninteresting that they eventually get bored and move on. I give generic thumbs ups in response to the long paragraphs where they mostly talk about themselves. I get the satisfaction of being petty, with plausible deniability. An inside joke, just for me. I give myself permission to have fun with this until they voluntarily leave. They raised me with less; I'm matching it with nothing.
Not everyone will want to be your friend, and that's ok. But nobody deserves to have their character attacked, or to be expected to be less and be ok with that. You are more than what they may try to diminish you to. You are never too much, and you are always enough.