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 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.
Over the years, I have thankfully fallen out of the habit of asking whether or not I am a burden, of feeling like a burden.
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.
((How much space I take up))