If someone says that you’re too much, believe them. Believe that you’re far too sparkly, too joyous, too beautiful, too succulently wild for them.

Say a sweet, fiery goodbye, and let go.

It can be exactly that simple.

We don’t need to spend year after miserable year stripping away our souls, deflating our juicy hearts and exhausting ourselves entirely, just to make this love work.

Because if we have to do that—it’s not working.

We aren’t meant to become pale, ghostly versions of our vibrant selves just to keep a lousy, half-hearted love affair alive.

We aren’t meant to drain our light and give away every ounce of our sparkle just for the sake of having someone to sleep next to at night.

We aren’t meant to freeze our stardust faces in perpetual zombie-like frowns, eyes dull dishwater, all so a sort-of-decent relationship can survive.

That isn’t love.

That’s desperation gone terribly wrong. It’s delusion. It’s hope drugged with fantasy. It’s hell.

Lean into truth. Lean into your truth.

Because that subtle sadness that trails behind you like a quiet ghost—that could become your life. That vacuousness. That colorlessness. That constant blah feeling like something just isn’t right. That could become the totality of your existence.

Terrifying thought, isn’t it?

Don’t let that happen, you delicious wild creature. You’re far too beautiful for that. Besides, you know who you are; you always have. Don’t turn your back on it. Not now.

Step closer to your heart—the fiery intensity, the plush, pink petals of softness, the complicated, multifaceted juiciness that lies far beneath the surface of your skin. When you do, you’ll find the gritty gems of truth to nourish you.

That’s how I found my truth; that’s how I came back to myself—by stepping so achingly, with shaky knees and tear-stained terror, into my heart. My heart, who was screaming for dear life for me to hear her increasingly desperate pleas, when I so badly didn’t want to listen.

See, I was madly in love with a man with whom I thought I’d spend the rest of my life.

But, there was one tiny problem: I couldn’t be myself with him. Not fully.

He hated when I would walk down the creaky stairs of our house, knee-deep in the muck of my gritty process, thoughts spinning like a tornado, eyes wild turquoise like a tumultuous sea, cheeks flooded with tears, emotions swirling vividly like paint-splattered flames around my body.

He wasn’t a fan.

He was overwhelmed, to say the least.

But, thats me. 

He always wanted me to “get control” of myself, but what he didn’t see, what he couldn’t see, is that my world is all about losing control; it’s about visiting other worlds, busting open crusty, old expectations, getting into contact with the most intense states there ever were and using that energy to to crack my heart wide open.

I do this daily. This is my path; I refuse to be diverted from it. I refuse to apologize for it.

He couldn’t handle that. He couldn’t handle me.

Does that make him a complete a**? No, he was a kind and decent man.

Does it make me wrong or terrible? Not at all.

I loved him so much, I thought it might actually kill me to let him go, but it didn’t kill me at all—it brought me back to life. It brought me back to the succulent songs of my soul’s cedar doorstep.

Love is not about sacrificing our identities.

It is not about molding ourselves into someone else so that maybe, just maybe, we can be loved forever, wear a sparkly ring on our finger and smile blankly, living slightly miserable lives in a quiet state of vacant unease.

That’s not a perfect life; that’s not a golden guarantee of happiness. That’s a goddamn cage, and it’s a lie.

No part of love should ever include dimming down our light, hiding our wildness, shushing our lioness roars or being anything less than all of who we really are.

Why would we want to be loved for our well-rehearsed mask, for being a thin, hollow two-dimensional version of ourselves, anyway?

We’re not the cute little umbrellas that protect carefully from the rain; we are the rain.

We are the dark, thundering sky opening up to a blisteringly beautiful display of static electricity and buzzing shocks of white-hot lightning. We are the raindrops that pour down in sheets of a thousand flavors of ecstatic bliss. And we are the gentle, warm sunlight that dries each raindrop on the smallest, tenderest blades of mint-green grass.

We are freakin’ goddesses. Not always subtle, not always sweet, but so very real.

Let’s stop apologizing for who we are. Aren’t we tired of apologizing—of pleasing and appeasing, of soothing, smoothing and accommodating—just so we can have someone to keep us warm at night?

You know what will keep us warm?

The roaring flames of our decadent souls.

The unstoppable songs of our hearts.

We attract lovers who can’t handle us because we are still learning to handle ourselves. We’re still learning that it’s not just okay, but absolutely awesome to be as, thirsty, poetic, intense, strong, mystical and magical as we are.

Let’s be ourselves.

Let’s stand ridiculously tall in our identities, with the firm knowing in our hearts that it’s going to take a very special jewel of a human to not only to handle us, but to match our vivid intensity and dripping thirst for life, too.

They’re out there. They’re roaring, digging deep, leading with their beautiful heart and finding their way, just like we are.

And they want us, just as we are. Real. Loud. Imperfect. Beautiful.

So let’s be done changing ourselves into dulled-down, mindless, polka-dotted princesses just so we can be in love.

Let’s be done thinking we have to change ourselves at all to be be in love.

Because when we stand truly tall in who we are, trusting our hearts, listening intently to our souls, love will find us.

Oh yes, a ripe, juicy, authentic love—

A love that will bow down at the feet of our wild hearts

A love that will encourage us to be even louder, even thirstier, even braver—

A love that will inspire us to

Burn brighter

Sing fiercer

And

Run freer

Than ever before.

But first, let us run

Fantastically free

With our

Selves.

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Relephant Read:

There’s No Such Thing as “Too Much Woman.”

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Author: Sarah Harvey

Editor: Toby Israel

Photo:  Gratisography 

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