Almost a decade ago, way before I understood what having ADHD meant, or really, what it was and how it applied to me, I wrote about the Goldilocks conundrum — about not feeling quite right. Of feeling too big for some things (hence the propensity for running away or clamping my mouth or policing my actions) and feeling too small for others (hence the propensity for running away or clamping my mouth or policing my actions).
Slowly, the feeling of being too small became my impostor syndrome, and the feeling of being too big, which was the philosophy behind my teenaged anorexia, became a similar, yet different, feeling: of feeling like I was too much.
It was what people would say when I was growing up; never really to offend, just to describe. She has too much energy, adults would say as they peer over their glasses and watch me be unable to sit still. She has too much chaos, friends would utter as they see me be a raucous. She has too much pep, strangers would think as they see me making friends with little children in trains, or doing a hip height wave towards dogs when I think their owners aren’t looking. She’s working too much, she’s doing too much, she’s thinking too much, she’s dancing too much, she’s drinking too much, she’s feeling too much (yes, this is a Carly Rae Jepsen reference), she’s speaking too much, she’s writing too much, she’s too much and too much and too much.
Now I know it’s ADHD, or my hypomanic rapid cycling.
But why do I feel so guilty?
The thing is, I am too much. Part and parcel of who I am is the fact that I am plagued with the inability to sit still. Just now (within the last eight hours), I started and finished a 5000 word article I’ve been putting off for the last two months because I don’t believe in first drafts (because why would I create something imperfect?). Then I sat and sewed, for three more hours.
I also completely forgot to eat the entire day.
And I have a used child-sized beginning sewing machine that’s just been checked out and will hopefully be in my hands in the next few days.
As a kid I thought being too much was a bad thing. And so I tried to fit myself in places to become more palatable. I tried so hard it became the size of my body, the portions I fed myself, the spaces I allowed myself to partake in.
And it stays with you. For the last decade I’ve had to learn and unlearn and relearn things about being too much, about how the reason I’m doing everything all at once is probably because I need to. The energy has to go somewhere, the thoughts have to dissipate into art, the words have to flow into notebooks or letters or academic papers or ramblings on the internet, the vibrations on the tips of my fingers have to be turned into paintings or doodles or woodworking or music. It’s an endless stream of activity, and the point is to let it be.
Keeping it in is worse.
At least from what I’ve experienced.
It turns to voices of doubt that you internalise, and on particularly bad days, they turn into singsongs or screams that invite you to end it all.
Because the too muchness won’t go anywhere.
I’ve learned to embrace being too much. Because it also means I have too much love to give (and so I give it away, almost indiscriminately), I have too much creativity (and so I paint, and sew, and draw, and dance, and write), and I have too much hope (and so I hope).
Yes, maybe it’s not the healthiest. Maybe too much (good or bad) can be too much (good or bad).
But also, maybe.
Just maybe.
It can be just right.
Of perpetual finds 