<p>Do I speak too loud? Do I speak too often? Do I tread too close to that invisible line of being ‘too much’?</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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?</p>
we breathe ourselves out and away. From ember to fading ember,<br/>
we give off a fainter scent. Oh, someone may tell us:<br/>
You get in my blood, this room, the springtime,<br/>
is filled with you…\footnote{\parencite[23]{duino}}</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I have recently had several 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 my partners and I speaking 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.</p>
<p>Over the years, I have thankfully fallen out of the habit of asking whether or not I am a burden, of <em>feeling</em> like a burden.</p>
<p>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.</p>
