Today I reread it and because I am about to reinvent myself, I decided I wasn’t afraid of what I had to say.
So here it is again.
My favorite book is EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE by Jonathan Safran Foer. I keep the book on my night stand and open it to random pages periodically. Inevitably I find a passage to underscore. I have literally hundreds of passages underscored. I imagine one day the entire book will be will one continuous underline.
And once again Jonathan spoke to me. spoke to the person I once was before all the hurt, before I turned off the oven and stopped baking bread. Everyone used to say I was just TOO. Too intense, too dark, too loud, too angry, that I cared too much, I thought too deeply, I was simply too much. So I turned it off. what they didn’t understand at the time was that it meant I had to stop caring about them too.
From time to time since then I have opened up my heart, only to inevitably be met with the same after the period of enchantment wore off. So back inside I would go. My partner J however, stayed for the long haul. we are in our 15th year together and she can still smell the bread even when I’m not baking. I will love her forever.
I am also lucky enough to have more than a handful of people in my life that in spite of not having been able to take me in at the time, continue to love the person I was, and see me even today for the person that I am. I try to listen to their words now and believe them when they tell me…the thing they loved the most about me was that I was TOO MUCH.
Today I am in the process of letting go of things that have held me back and I am on course to returning to myself, because frankly I preferred myself when I was just too much.
So that’s that about all that.
Victoria
ReplyDelete- whoever told you you were TOO much - was sleep-walking and not wanting to be woken up. Go for it! go for this feeling, waking world with a bang, a glisten, a laugh, a sigh, a crackle - incredibly loud or imperceptibly subtle.
It might sometimes hurt a bit, like birth, love and loss, but...
You will never lose real people's love from being more alive and wider awake - just those who don't understand what awake means...and some of them may even be encouraged to spin the bottle on the edge of the table...
alive every second - the only place to be.
my dear Pat...you remind me always of my value..thank you again for your words
ReplyDeleteBeing TOO MUCH needs a special kind of courage and it means you have it in you!
ReplyDeleteVictoria, I could relate so much to this post of yours!
Thank you so much for letting me feel those TOO MUCH feelings that I often keep buried inside me, once again!!!
I incidentally landed on this one because the title of the blog was so inviting .I enjoyed reading it to say the least.
ReplyDeleteregarding that underline on feeing less
Heart said to eyes "see less because you will see and i will suffer a lot"
Eyes replied to heart " feel less as you will feel and I will have to cry a lot"
Keep writing and believe me there are no limits.....I would shut up with this
My house says to me, "Do not leave me, for here dwells your past."
And the road says to me, "Come and follow me, for I am your future."
And I say to both my house and the road, "I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death will change all things."