<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>
<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>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. I don’t know if anyone else sees it. I doubt it.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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}}</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I live a sometimes apology, instead.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I wish I could cast that in the sense of marvel, of wonder, of beauty, rather than terrifying that someone would perceive me.</p>
<p>Who, though I screamed, would hear me among the ranks<br/>
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<br/>
of the terrifying, which we can only just endure.\footnote{\cite[11]{duino}}</p>
<p>Ah well, if wishes were fishes, I would look into their scales and see some more perfect version of myself.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I write and write and write, and then I fret and fret. My adversary, my <em>makyō</em> sidles up to me, their movements a smirk, brushes my hair out of my eyes, tuts.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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}}</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How dare I! How dare I take up that space! And with malice and aforethought!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Don’t they know I’m working hard at defining my boundaries? Frankly, it’s quite rude.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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! See? There is Job! There is Rilke and El-Mohtar and Gladstone!”</p>
