Just Being A Little Too Much
Or, being a person is hard and uncomfy but we're trying.
For a refresher on wtf this is you can click here. Thanks for indulging me today, doll.
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Sometimes all you need is a little sprinkle of feminine rage.
It’s been a weird summer. Six (or seven? was it seven?) different retrogrades, two super moons, ghosts from my past and present popping out in corners, some health shit for my dog and then some for me for good measure, just to name a few of the things that I’ve been swimming in for the last few months. Needless to say, I’m feeling more than ok with leaving Summer 2023 behind.
The first time I met with my new therapist back in July, she said something along the lines of, “I sense a lot of anger coming off of you right now.” To say she was spot on wouldn’t do it justice. Anger, hurt, frustration, irritation—it was basically oozing out of every pore. Two-ish months later I don’t find the anger to be as palpable. Other feelings, other versions of me are closer to the surface. The vulnerability is more in the front seat, the disappointment drives more often, the sensitivity seeps through more than it used to.
But the anger is absolutely still there. And I have no problem letting her out when need be.
Something a friend told me years ago that has stuck with me is “Anger implies self-worth.” I think there’s a lot of validity to that but more than the self-worth angle, I think anger can be self-care.
Which is why these days my media of choice is honestly violence. When the sun starts to set and I can actually see the TV, I’m molotov-ing shamblers and rioters and anyone in my way in the TLOU2. Rather than bingeing the new Love is Blind, I’m rewatching heads explode in The Boys. The sounds of Pearl hacking at her rival best frenemy serenade me while I work on content calendars and pitch decks. Pennywise’s laugh has lulled me to sleep more than once. Bath Haus, My Murder, and Nightbitch sit on my nightstand waiting to be devoured.
I think sometimes women and femmes really resist leaning into their feminine rage. I don’t feel this way at all, especially right now. I find it can be deeply relaxing. Rage feels safe. Rage tampers anxiety. Rage feels like everything is going to be ok because I’ll make sure it is.
I say all of this while also maintaining, I don’t want to be known as an angry person and I don’t want to be a person who immediately leaps to getting enraged. I’m actively working on being more gentle, finding softness, and not moving through the world with walls on either side of me. Multi-dimensionality is crucial; I get it, I believe it, and I’m trying.
But when everything feels like it is unmanageable, god does letting myself just be fucking pissed about it feel good.
I know this won’t last. Like everything else the rage comes in waves. I think about the wave as a metaphor for life a lot. Really the ocean is a pretty excellent one overall. Right now things may be storming, but eventually the seas will inevitably calm. The tide goes in, and it also goes out. I might be in the hurricane at the moment, but everything passes.
For the time being though, graphic amounts of stage blood and fictional cannibalism feel pretty good. The rage of it all feels right.
Happy October, I guess.I just really need to try this pasta shape.
I have opinions about literally everything. I have called myself a professional opinion haver on more than one occasion. But one of the main things I have opinions on is food—and there. are. many.
One of my most controversial beliefs is that most lettuce is stupid. I almost positive I’ve made people fall in love with me by asking them to choose their favorite sandwich from a detailed list. I think you can gauge compatibility based on hangover orders. But also, buying tomato paste in a jar or can is idiotic. Anchovies should be a staple in every home. Shallots are superior to onions but onions are more practical.
And when it comes to pasta, I think what a person’s favorite or preferred pasta shape is says a lot about who they are as a human. What if you were starting to fall in love with someone and you found out they liked farfalle or god forbid, penne? That’d send even the most stable of brains into shock, I fear.
While I have my go tos (big rigatoni, bucatini, orzo, and casarecce), I’ll never turn down trying an interesting pasta shape. Giant fusilli with spinach pesto, vesuvio with spicy ragu, calamarata for your cacio e pepe instead of just a normal, everyday noodle is a cheap thrill in this decidedly fucked up world. If you can’t spend your money on things that spark joy, really what is the point of going to work at all.
So yes, fellow Kendra, I do need to try the XXL tubular pasta. To continue using her parlance, I really, really do.
When I can figure out how to order it you best believe I will be documenting it here. That’s all!A quote for my fellow anxious people:
“I used to think it was vital to know things, to feel safe in the learning and recounting of facts. I used to think it was possible to know enough to escape from the panic of not knowing, but I realize now that you can never learn enough to protect yourself, not really.”
Our Wives Under the SeaA Short List Of Things Worth Indulging In:
Next time you’re shopping for cheese at the grocery store I’d really encourage you to move away from the slices in what are essentially plastic bags and go to the actual cheese section. The one where they’re wrapped in saran wrap and priced by the pound. Where if you’re at an actual grocery store there will be somewhat of a cheese monger who can point you in the right direction. Buy something you can’t pronounce. And the softest goat cheese (bitches love Humbolt Fog). And the saltiest pecorino. Life is too short to buy cheese that is mostly made of preservatives.
Do yourself a favor and do not live your life under overhead lighting, and especially not fluorescents. Soft, warm lighting and candles make any space almost automatically feel better. No one looks their best under “the big light.” Honestly I would disconnect mine if I could. But anyway, you can actually search for lightbulbs that will make your place feel more ambient. You will thank yourself.
If you find yourself in a place where you have a tub that will cover both your knees and your chest, take a damn bath. Fill it with bubbles, get yourself a little drink, and soak until you look like a raisin. If you’re a reader try and get through a third of your book while you let the water work its magic on your muscles, on your anxieties, or just on you. If you’re not, cue up an episode of a show that lets you turn your brain off and just enjoy. Doing nothing is one of the most important things we can actually do for ourselves.
Fresh flowers are always worth it. Buy them for yourself, for your partner, for the “just because” of it all. Thrift interesting vases to display them every week. Clip the stems on an angle, change the water every few days, and stock up on those little flower food packets to add in although sugar and ACV works too. Press the petals from bunches you love. Treat yourself to little moments that make your life feel a little more romantic.
And back to the grocery store, buy yourself some good butter. There’s ingredient butter (think butter for baking and cooking) and there’s eating butter. Buy yourself some semi-expensive, luxe eating butter. Display it in a weird little butter dish on your counter. Enjoy the experience of unwrapping it from its probably overly indulgent packaging. Dust it with flaky salt on toast in the morning. Decide you’re worth the $13 butter. Decide you’re worth the good manchego. Decide you’re worth the flowers, the bath, the treating yourself of it all. Decide it again and again and again.Some thoughts on being a little too much.
I’ve never been very good at knowing knowing when to say when.
One drink often turns into twelve, I mow through Diet Cokes and Polar Seltzers like there will soon be a drought of both, if a server offers me freshly grated parm I’m inclined to let them shred an entire mountain on my plate. I read almost every book I start in one sitting, when I’m obsessed with something I will become a civilian expert, and even when I’ve *mostly* let something go if pressed I can give a TedTalk level speech on anyone who has ever wronged me.
I’m a lot. And I know it. Too much, one might even say—some have.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when, but at some point in the non-linear journey that is “becoming who you are” I stopped letting myself be the main character. I stopped being the center of attention. I went inward, stopped hitting “post,” stopped always saying what I think, resisted standing up for myself, bit my tongue so hard I tasted pennies and flesh and my own actual thoughts and regret and regret and regret.
A note: This is all pertaining to things in my personal life. I’ll tell you you’re wrong for loving penne and that Taylor Swift is a white feminist any fucking day of the week. Let’s continue.
When you grow up with a Too Much Gene™ you get really good at stifling and repressing and shoving it all down. When I’m disappointed I wait until I’m completely alone to cry about it, and I’ll almost never talk about it. When someone breaks my heart, I automatically want to act like I don’t care. When my parents routinely reject me, I act like that doesn’t feel like reopening the same scab and pouring in the cheapest table salt every single time.
But the weird thing about shoving shit down, about not letting your real feelings, insecurities, or self be seen, is you’re always going to find another outlet.
You’ll always find another “when” to reject.
I don’t know if it’s the combo of being a Virgo Sun, Virgo Rising, Scorpio Venus, a former theatre kid, or something else entirely but I’ve always felt like I can simultaneously fill a room with one sentence and then also not be seen by anyone in it whatsoever. Three years ago (almost to the date, ironically) I wrote:
“I feel like a ghost a lot. Like I’m in a room full of people flicking a light switch back and forth as fast and as randomly as I can just hoping someone notices. I’ve always said that I’m great with a crowd—I can turn it on and put on a show and be the life of the party and impress all of the strangers and have them say, ‘Wow who was that girl?’ at the end of it. But did any of those people actually see the real me? No. They saw the lights going on and off repeatedly and said how cool it was without ever really getting to the source.”
That feeling has never really gone away.
I’ve said time and time again (I said it the following paragraph in that essay from three years ago!) that my superpower is letting people feel like I am an open book without actually saying anything at all. Somewhere along the way, wanting to not be “too much” became “do everything in your power to not even let rejection be a possibility.” Push it all down, make yourself so small that you could never even attempt to rock a boat. Smile with gritted teeth. Be served the wrong order and say thank you anyway and chew the fat. Say yes to everything, even when it’s going to obviously fuck you over. Accept the shit end of the stick. It’s better than nothing, right?
Not knowing when to say when can manifest in many different ways. It can be overindulgence, it can be ostentatious. It can be being the loudest person in the room or the one with the wildest stories or the one who definitely didn’t need that round of yuzu shots that were sent to the table.
Or it can be there in self-sabotage. In self-destruction. In thinking and defining the absolute worst about yourself so that there’s literally nothing anyone could ever say that would even be a blip on your radar because you’ve thought it before and you’ve thought it harsher and meaner and more to a T than they ever could.
I think more than being a metaphorical ghost I’m really a person who has moved through a lot of my life with some very specific walls put up. The switch-plate may have been flipping, and I might have even been the one making the lights go on and off, but I very deliberately made sure no one could even really tell what was happening. I mean I wouldn’t want to bother them. And even if they did see, that’s kind of annoying to deal with, right? And would they have even cared in the first place?
All of this to say, I think I’m in Too Much Gene™ recovery. The walls are still there, but I’m not rejecting the idea of them being slightly more translucent. My hand is on the light switch, but I’m trying to not feel as irritated at myself for wanting the attention. When people ask me a question, I don’t jump to them wanting the answer for some nefarious reason and instead try to operate under the assumption that maybe they just care.
I’ve never been very good at knowing knowing when to say when.
I never go to the doctor instead treating 100+ degree fevers with Motrin, ice, and Reddit MD. I eat the same breakfast for days in a row until one day I bite it and it tastes like cardboard. I’ve operated a lot of my life in the black and white. I’ve been extremely cut and dry with people. I’ve been too liberal with the block button and also indulged people for far longer than I should have at the time. I’ve wasted my breath on conversations that never deserved it in the first place and I’ve let my actual thoughts die a slow death out of sheer stubbornness.
But I’m trying. I’m showing up. I’m trying to lead with the gentle side of me that thinks, no, knows that everything exists in the middle. That everything can be shades of grey. That truth is somewhere in between. I’m letting people care about me (sometimes). I’m admitting when I’m sad. I’m letting myself cry on my birthday because birthdays and growing and just being a person is hard. I’m trying to let myself just be, for a change.
I’m trying to learn when is when.
And maybe, just maybe, that will end up being just enough.
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