the crime of being small (and feeling deeply)
what a sensitive self-represser wants you to say
Most of us have fallen victim to the poem by Althea Davis that so painfully pleads from the perspective of a spider, “I pray nobody kills me for the crime of being small,” and, consequentially, most of us have experienced the overwhelming pity and guilt that follows.
I had an enormous reaction to its ten lines. I became totally engulfed in this spiky sea of brokenness and tears fell from my eyes as if a loved one had died. Really, no one had died. There wasn’t even a dead or shaking bug in sight, but it was the prospect of a sentient spider fighting for its place in the world that inspired a palpable grief. And, sure, I’ve had similar reactions to the usual suspects—someone eating alone, or being excluded from conversation, something even as small as watching someone stumble over their words—but I can’t be too bad, can I?
I’ve never had a clear answer for myself, and it’s made me insecure. This is what I do know: I’ve been met with laughs for crying (sometimes a confused stare), I’ve become aware of when to stifle it and when I’m safe to be, and across the two situations, the same terms are used to describe me (i.e. sensitive, emotional, dramatic, the like).
They’re words dressed in the wool sweater of endearment, which only becomes scratchy after consistent use, and sometimes they’re the silky chemise of snideness that becomes sweaty all too quick in a spring night. I always thought I could tell who would wear what, but there have been strange pockets in the usual that tear the fabric of my consensus. Then, it’s clear how little I actually know about what’s normal.
I’ve come to learn that my closest people are not immune to making me feel that I’m too emotional, too concerned, too sensitive, too much. When that feeling comes along it’s like slamming my hand on a needle. The onset is shocking. The internal damage seems shallow. The pain is entirely resounding. Internalizing it is almost inevitable, and quickly I sprout a green and white shell—one that says I am happy! I am changed! All the while, I’m just a tighter ball of stimulated endings wound in the corner thinking, I am overbearing. I am intemperate. I am too much.
Everything takes a home inside me, bottled up to be shipped away for later discovery, probably at an exceedingly inconvenient time. I’m not proud of it, and I work against it every day in hopes that I will turn a stone and find that sensitivity is empathy, and emotionality is feeling deeply. Yes, feeling deeply. I saw that, too, in a TikTok recently; it was how a young girl chose to describe her older sister who cried numerous times on vacation as a result of her massive love for the world around her.
I’d like to be described as feeling deeply. I like the way it sounds and the buzz it leaves on my tongue as it rolls off, spilling into a puddle of rainbow oil where I can swim slick along the pavement, always feeling the bumps but avoiding scrapes. I’d like to be met with a soft smile beyond my tears and a hand on my shoulder implying total comfort in the field of my passion. Then, I would not give urgency to feeling less. I’d be soft, liquid-smooth when the time was right. I’d live without fear of the space I’m taking up or the pools that I’m flooding or the way that I worry.
No, I’m never only sad. I feel love at titanic proportions, much like happiness and excitement. Not just doom and gloom. Not just sympathy and pity, but all the fruits of living. I’m lucky to feel it all so physically, to know that it’s real because my body says it is. It echoes and booms off the walls I’ve stacked so high to keep myself safe, walls that give way to new upset and joy through their stained glass arches and lack of sturdy roof.
CHECKING IN: mood - bouncy listening to - lost by frank ocean reading - ACOTAR writing - a poem for later Take good care of each other, and feel free to comment your own check-in responses. I'd love to read them, sweetnesses. Until next time.
Wow this was mind blowing…. Thank you princess 😘🌸
Thank you this was beautiful!