“And all the while I feel I’m standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming at the top of my lungs, and no one even looks up.”
— Titanic

There are people who move through life untouched, like they’ve built walls so high nothing can shake them. And then there are people like me—people who feel everything, all at once, with no filter, no shield, no way to turn it down.

I’ve never been able to do “lightly.” Not with love, not with hurt, not with disappointment. What others brush off like dust clinging to their sleeve, I carry like a stone in my chest. A look, a word, a silence—it sinks into me and refuses to let go. My heart doesn’t know the difference between small and big; it only knows how to feel deeply.

And then there was an ex. He once told me I was “too good at being a girlfriend.” Too much. Too quick with what he called “the mushy stuff.” But what he really meant was that I was thoughtful—that I planned things for him, did things for him, went out of my way to make sure he felt cared for. I would send him memes or quotes that reminded me of him, little things just to say, you’re on my mind. I paid attention. I invested. I tried to show him, in ways big and small, that he mattered to me.

But instead of appreciating it, he admitted he didn’t know what to do with it. And so, rather than letting it in, he asked me to dial it back—as if my love, my effort, my nurturing was something excessive, something that needed trimming down to size.

That cut deep, because at the end of the day, that’s who I am. I am a nurturer—whether I like to admit it or not. When I care about someone, I want them to know it. I want to build people up. I want to remind them they matter. When I’m in, I’m all in. And to be told that this part of me—the best, most wholehearted part of me—was somehow too much, left a wound that still aches when I think about it.

This isn’t to vilify him. He isn’t a bad person. But it’s ironic now, looking back from where I am—happier than I can remember being, or at least as happy as I can be—that he’s remarked my happiness stings him. And I don’t think he fully understands the pain he once put me through, the sting of being asked to be less than myself just to make him comfortable.

Rejection—or what I feel as rejection—cuts deeper for me than most. When I sense it, I instinctively pull back. I reset my boundaries, redraw my lines, and put space between myself and the person who’s made me feel unwanted. It’s not silence for the sake of silence—it’s survival. I distance myself, not because I stop caring, but because I care so much that I have to retreat before it destroys me. To protect myself, I step back into the shadows, rebuild my walls, and swallow the words I ache to say. But the ache doesn’t go away. The coldness of that distance lingers like frost under the skin, reminding me that closeness is never without risk, and that every time I reach too far, I might be left standing in the dark, alone.

I’ve tried to fold myself into the box people would rather see me in—quiet, contained, easy. To smile politely when I wanted to scream, to move on quickly when I wanted to linger, to brush things off when they burned holes straight through me. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop feeling. It’s stitched into the fabric of who I am.

And that is the double-edged sword. Because when you give your heart to someone who cannot—or will not—give the same in return, it becomes a wound that never fully heals. It feels like standing outside in the cold, waiting for warmth that never comes, while they leave you there, alone.

This isn’t about wanting too much. It isn’t about trying to fix people or change the world. Sometimes it’s about the simplest thing: wanting to know I matter. Wanting to believe that all of this feeling isn’t wasted in a world where so many pretend not to care.

The truth is, I can only be rejected, silenced, and broken for my feelings so many times before the cracks start to show. Before I stop reaching as far, stop speaking as freely, stop giving as much. Not because I don’t feel—because I will always feel—but because I’ve learned that most people don’t want the weight of a heart like mine.

At the end of it all, I can say this: I felt. Messily, inconveniently, disastrously at times—
but I felt.
And most people will never understand what that costs,
because most people will never know what it’s like.

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