Before I Felt Less

I was once told that I felt too much. That I reacted too much. That I cried too much. 

And you know what, they were right. 

I did react emotionally to sometimes even the smallest things. 

Like the time I cried because I didn’t like pickles. Or the time I cried because my regular Kwik-Fit man gave me a bag of branded goodies.  

But I would cry about the big things, too.  

I would feel all the big emotions so heavily that I’d been labelled as overemotional. 

Overbearing. Too much. 

I'd felt love too intensely. I worried about things too much. I cared deeply about how others perceived me.  

So I took these comments to mean that my emotions must have been a weakness, and over time, something changed.

Something shifted, and I couldn’t pinpoint when, but I found myself caring less. 

Avoiding my emotions. 

Steering clear of anything that would simply make me feel.  

I’d become numb to it.  

I had felt so much, too much, that I desensitised myself from feeling anything.  

I had trained myself, subconsciously, to process things so differently that I had gone too far the other way. 

There were moments when I noticed it most. Times when something should have moved me, and it didn’t.  

Bad news that I absorbed too quickly. Good news that I barely registered. 

I stopped replaying moments in my head. Stopped feeling the ache of disappointment or the swell of excitement in my chest. It felt efficient, almost impressive, how little lingered. 

I told myself this was growth. That I was finally coping. That I was calmer, steadier, more composed.  

But it started to feel like I was watching my own life from a distance, present but not fully participating in it. 

It was my Mum, actually, who just looked at me one day and said, “How can you have become so emotionless?” Which felt weird, having always been the girl who cried and couldn't handle her emotions at all.  

I mulled over this for a while.  

I hadn’t stopped to consider that maybe this wasn’t the girl I wanted to be at all. 

That maybe feeling nothing was ultimately more destructive than simply feeling everything.  

I began to wonder if I had done it to protect myself.  

If feeling less had felt safer than risking being too much again.  

If quieting my emotions had been a way of shrinking myself into something more acceptable, more manageable.  

It wasn’t cruelty or coldness. It was self-preservation. 

But I wanted to feel love deeply. I wanted to be able to cry at the cinema when a film moved me. I wanted to embrace my excitement over the little things that brought me joy.  

Because why would I not? 

Feeling less hadn’t made me stronger. It had just made me quieter inside.  

And while feeling everything had once overwhelmed me, feeling nothing took something just as important away.  

Somewhere between the two, there had to be a balance. A way to feel deeply without drowning in it. A way to let emotions move through me, rather than define me or disappear altogether. 

I’m still learning what that looks like. Some days I feel everything again, all at once. Other days I retreat, instinctively, into quiet. But now I notice it. I pause.  

I don’t shame myself for either. 

I’m learning that sensitivity doesn’t mean instability, and steadiness doesn’t require numbness. That I can be soft and grounded at the same time. 

I am allowed to take up emotional space. To feel things as outwardly as I need to. Without apology. 

And yes, to cry over pickles, too.