Loving Me Is a War

“How was I supposed to know what I could handle?! You're too much.”

The words are still pulsing in the air. They hit and everything in me went quiet. Not the peaceful kind. No, the kind of quiet that happens right after impact, when the body is still deciding whether to scream or shut down completely. I don’t even know if I breathed after the words were said. It was like time paused just long enough for my chest to cave in. They won’t stop echoing. Louder than my anxiety. Louder than my depression. Louder than my own heartbeat. Louder than the whisper that still wants to believe I might be lovable.

You’re too much.

It doesn’t sound like constructive feedback or even a description, it sounds like a complete sentence. A flaw. A verdict handed down like I’ve been on trial my whole life for simply existing as I am. It echoes through me like a gavel signaling the confirmation of something I didn’t know was up for debate. Like maybe I was always too loud, too raw, too haunted to ever be chosen without conditions. Too sad in ways that linger. Too honest in moments that made people uncomfortable. Too open, like a wound that never learned how to close. Maybe I’m more than anyone could ever love and less than anyone could ever save. Maybe I tear hearts apart just by existing… without meaning to, without even knowing it. Maybe I carry too many restless ghosts that never learned how to be silent, haunting every corner of who I am, tormenting anyone reckless enough to open the door and step inside my haunted house. Maybe I’m stitched together from too many broken shards, littered with landmines hidden beneath what looks like softness. Maybe the cracks inside me are wide and deep enough to swallow every good thing around me whole, leaving nothing but wreckage. And maybe love - real, lasting, unshaken love - has never stood a chance in someone like me.

I wish I could say the words slid off me. I wish I could lie and pretend they didn’t split something sacred wide open, but they did. They hit like a sucker punch to the soul, the kind you never see coming until the air’s gone and you’re left gasping. They didn’t fade. They echoed. Circled. Sank their teeth in. And now they haunt the quiet… lurking in every still moment, whispering that maybe this pain was always waiting for me. Like the sheer weight of who I am was reckless. Like asking to be held in all my fullness was selfish. Like the real failure was daring to believe that being fully, painfully, unapologetically me was something someone could ever stay for. Like my existence alone was the burden, the flaw, the unforgivable ask.

I feel gutted. Hollowed out like someone reached inside and ripped out everything soft and sacred and left me staring at the wreckage. Like all the fears I’ve whispered to myself in the dark were never irrational.. they were prophecies. Too much. Not beautiful. Not brave. Not the kind of human anyone stays for. Just… too much. Like a walking hurricane someone mistook for a breeze, until they were waist-deep in my wreckage, looking for the exit that was already ripped down.

And now I’m not a person, I’m a problem. Not a lover, but a liability. A mistake dressed up in hope. A heart that should’ve come with a warning: fragile, chaotic, handle with caution or not at all.
Maybe I’m the kind of person who can only be loved in fragments, picked apart like a puzzle no one has the patience to finish. Maybe my grief is a raw, open wound that won’t stop bleeding. Maybe my love crashes like a tidal wave… too fierce, too relentless, too much to hold. Maybe my silence presses down like a weight no one wants to bear. Maybe my mind races in storms no one can calm, and my heart cracks wide open, bleeding faster than anyone can heal. Maybe what I carry isn’t just scars… it’s weight. Heavy, unrelenting, soul-deep weight. The kind that suffocates anything trying to grow close. Maybe loving me doesn’t feel like a gift at all, maybe it feels like going to war without armor, without rest, without the promise of peace. Maybe it’s brutal. Exhausting. The kind of fight that drains more than it gives. And maybe that’s the truth I’ve been too afraid to name out loud: I’m not someone people keep. That love has to work too hard to survive in me. That I cost too much. Take too much. Need too much. That no matter how much I soften or shrink, I still end up being a storm no one has the strength to weather.

It feels like I was born with a heart too large to fit anywhere quietly. A soul that wails too fiercely to be ignored. A mind that never stops racing, never finds peace. Like every hand that’s ever reached for my scars has recoiled. Maybe not because they were weak, but because I’m not the kind of broken you can fix. Because I’m a house still burning from the inside out, and no one wants to live in flames. It’s a truth that doesn’t bring relief or understanding. It brings crushing sorrow. It drags you under with tears you never saw coming, with shame that sinks into your bones, with a kind of brokenness love wasn’t made to heal. It’s the sickening, hollowing thought that maybe they don’t leave because they’re too fragile, they leave because loving me is too hard, too exhausting, too impossible. Maybe I’m wildfire - too fierce, too consuming, too untamed to be held for long without turning everything tender into ash. Maybe no matter how deeply I love, I still scorch the edges, still leave smoke where softness used to be. Maybe I was never meant to be kept - just survived.

Maybe I am too much. Maybe I always have been too loud, too deep, too tender, too emotional, too wrecked, too everything. I’ve already tried shrinking… peeling off pieces of myself until I was almost see‑through and somehow even the watered‑down version still overflows the room. I don’t know how to vanish any further without turning into smoke. I don’t know how to mute a voice that was born to reverberate off every wall. Maybe that’s the cruelest truth of all, not that I’m too much, but that even pared back, hollowed out, half‑alive… I’m still more than anyone wants to carry. This is the only way I know how to exist… full volume, full ache, no mask, no filter. Just what’s left of me, bleeding at the seams, bones rattling with hope, still begging to be loved as if that isn’t a declaration of war.

Maybe I am too much.
Maybe I’ve always been too much.
And maybe the most brutal thing I can do right now is admit that I don’t know how to be anything less and I’m not surviving the loneliness of being loved with so many conditions.

Author’s Note:
Originally written June 2, 2022 - “A love letter from the battlefield of being too much”.

I wrote this from inside the burning wreckage. From the all too familiar bathroom floor. From the in-between, where the air is thick with shame and the unanswered questions ring and scream. Where I replay everything I gave and everything I lost, and wonder if the love I offer is just... unsustainable. Like a wildfire- beautiful and bright, but dangerous. A warning. A lesson. A thing to run from.

I can’t sit here and say I’ve made peace with that version of me. I can’t give you a hopeful, graceful bow to tie this all up with. I don’t know how to reflect on this in a way that’s pretty. The truth is, some words don’t just sting. They brand you. And unfortunately, these words branded me.

But it’s not true. At least, not in the way I once believed. I am too much, all of that is still true. But I’ve learned that “too much” isn’t the curse I thought it was; it’s just a measure of intensity. And intensity isn’t wrong. It’s just rare. The right hearts don’t flinch at it. The right ones stay. Some even crave it.

And maybe if loving me is a war, then the answer was never to lower my flags.
Maybe it was to find someone ready to sail through the storm, no matter how fierce.
Someone who already knows what it means to suit up and stay in it. Heart steady. Armor off..

Turns out, I was never too much to love. I just needed someone who knew what to do with more. Someone trained for impact, who doesn’t retreat when the waves hit, but drops anchor and chooses to stay. Someone who doesn’t mistake depth for danger, who doesn’t see my magnitude as a warning sign. Someone who doesn't retreat at the first sign of thunder, but meets the wreckage head-on and says without fear, “brace until you realize you don’t have to anymore. Just know I’m here”.