At the heart of so many of my anxieties lies the question of just how much space I'm allowed to take up.

Do I speak too loud? Do I speak too often? Do I tread too close to that invisible line of being 'too much'?

Am I too demanding? Do I need too much minding? Is the amount of attention I seem to seek above the norm, whatever that is?

Do I park myself in the corner of others' minds? Do I sit cross-legged on the floor, a tripping hazard? Do I follow them around their thoughts, speaking --- or not speaking, yet nevertheless present?

Is asking so many questions just feeding into that anxiety?

> For we, when we feel, evaporate. Oh,  
> we breathe ourselves out and away. From ember to fading ember,  
> we give off a fainter scent. Oh, someone may tell us: you get in my blood, this room, the springtime,  
> is filled with you...\footnote{\cite[23]{duino}}

I keep having conversations about this, about how much space I take up. Almost all of them take place over text, too, as they often come with a worry that synchronous communication might be too much of a demand. Some of them take place between me and my partners, and I speak frankly about how we interact with each other. Others take place between other versions of me, characters I role play or those that I write, each expressing their own anxiety.

Over the years, I may have fallen out of the habit of asking whether or not I am a burden, of feeling like a burden. But what I haven't done is relinquish the feeling that there are bounds around me. There is a barrier that marks the end of me, a sphere of influence that has a point where it stops, my own little causal domain. I don't know if anyone else sees it. I doubt it.

*I* see it, though. It's always there. A little shield, a screen, a forcefield, glimmering and translucent. It's the point where the space that I take up ends.

> I must tell you it gives me great pleasure to think of you reading these words in licks and whorls of flame, your eyes unable to work backwards, unable to keep the letters on a page; instead, you must absorb them, admit them into your memory.\footnote{\cite[8]{timewar}}

I wish I could see triumph in this. I wish I could see victory in the space that I take up, in the way I crouch within the minds of my friends.

I wish I could prowl through their memories, touching one after the other --- oh! This one! See that time we drove together, mostly in silence, maybe a little drunker than we should have been? Ooh, or this one, when we sat together outside a Friday night movie showing and you told me how you thought at one point that you were gay, but decided no, probably not.

I live a sometimes apology, instead.

Still, I have friends. The apology is only sometimes, and I will spend hours with them simply enjoying myself before that 'sometimes' creeps up, a strangely-shaped piece of grit between my molars. Ah, you want to come inside after that drive? I'm sorry that my place is messy. Oh, you told me you're straight and I didn't hide my disappointment well enough, I liked you so much.

I wish I could bask in the sense of wonder, of marvel, of beauty --- rather than terrifying --- that someone would perceive me.

> Who, though I screamed, would hear me among the ranks  
> of the angels? And even supposing one of them took me suddenly to his breast, I would perish within his overpowering being. For the beautiful is right at the margin  
> of the terrifying, which we can only just endure.\footnote{\cite[11]{duino}}

Ah well, if wishes were fishes, I would look into their glittering scales and see some more perfect version of myself.

And so I continue to make my way through the world. I, like Rilke's elegist, choke back the lure I would give, walking softly and keeping my arms and legs inside at all times. Or most of the time, perhaps.

Sometimes my apology will fail, my graphomania will get the better of me, and I will spill my words on to pages, onto screens, into books and essays and notes.

I'll litter online spaces with evidence of my presence. I'll write my missives and leave them in public for my friends to find, little notes that very carefully do not contain any I-love-yous.

> Will you cut off, leaving my note to spin its fractal math inside you?\footnote{\cite[14]{duino}}

I write and write and write, and then I fret and fret. My adversary, my *makyō* sidles up to me, their movements a smirk, brushes my hair out of my eyes, tuts.

> Anything I make that is at all meaningful to me — that is, anything that I feel is worth sharing — is too much to ask others to engage with. “How dare you,” it says. “How dare you ask that others consider your work meaningful.”\footnote{\cite{ally-making-of}}

How dare I! How dare I take up that space! And with malice and aforethought!

I use my will to wedge myself into the world. I project an intent and make myself known. I speak up and then cringe at the sound of my voice, and even my love poems, written but unsent, cringe away from my presence.

> I live my life in eternal terror  
> of the completeness of your own.  
> I take up so little space  
> and impinge upon it so gently,  
> I only hope that there is space enough  
> for a 'dear' here and a 'lovely' there.  
> If beauty is at the edge of the terrifying,  
> I live my life in eternal terror.

But, ah! My friends, all those who promised I wasn't a burden back when that was a thing I would ask them about, they all clap! They clap and smile and tell me that I've done a good thing.

Don't they know I'm working hard at defining my boundaries? Don't they know they're praising me for violating those very same boundaries? Frankly, it's quite rude. Even my love poems, written but unsent, beg them stop.

> Cover me, crush me, compress me.  
> Squeeze me down until I fit in your pocket.  
> Let me jangle among your keys,  
> or slip between bills in your wallet.  
> Forget me, let me fray, let me fall apart.  
> And, some day, pull me free,  
> dust me off, flatten me out,  
> and tell me that you love me.

But I am working at getting better at accepting that sort of feedback. I'm trying to accept that taking up space is even allowed.

> And we marvel at it so because it holds back in serene disdain  
> and does not destroy us. \footnote{\cite[11]{duino}}

I cycle through defenses. I try silence some days. Other days, as I have spent the last however many thousand words doing, as I'm still doing, I will justify my existence through words, then justify my words by leaning on those of others. "I mean what I'm saying!" I say. "And here is proof! See? There is Issa and Dwale! See? There is Job! There is Rilke and El-Mohtar and Gladstone!"

Even now, even as I set my words in pixels on screen and ink on paper and promise myself that I *won't* do this, will only sprinkle in those too-heady words that I love so much, promise myself that I'm not going to justify my place in the world by shoring it up with others' writing, I do anyway. I use those quotes for color, I tell myself, then anxiously cite them in the footnotes.

> PS. I hesitate to write this, but---I've noticed my letters run long. If you'd rather I grow more concise, I can. I don't want to presume. \footnote{\cite[65]{timewar}}

And perhaps it's too much. Perhaps I really *am* too much.

Why, then, do I feel like ever more? Why do I feel like more than myself? How did I get to a point where there is enough of me that identity began to creak and groan, to sag, to show seams where stress-fractures began?
