I’m Not Too Much

I grew up in a house filled with the presence of war. Not war itself, but its echoes. Memories that were rarely spoken yet lived everywhere, in the silences, in sudden changes of mood, in the quiet weight that settled into the rooms. As a child, I did not fully understand what I was sensing, but I learned to move carefully around it. Without realizing it, I learned to make myself smaller around what already felt too heavy.

I learned to be quiet where quiet was needed and not to take too much space. I became responsible early and asked for very little. From the outside, I was a very good student, independent and capable, a child who seemed to manage on her own. Inside, I learned something else. I learned to be careful not to stand out too much, not to feel too loudly, and not to make things more complicated than they already were.

And so I escaped. I escaped into literature and poetry, into old books and long afternoons of reading. I pressed flowers between pages and wrote stories in notebooks. I searched for quiet places, and for nature, and for the kind of stillness where attention becomes almost a way of breathing. There I could exist more freely.

But the child I was did not easily belong to the world around her. Israel of the seventies and eighties was shaped by the collective. There were youth movements, and groups, and circles of belonging, and an unspoken expectation that you would find your place among others. I never quite knew how to do that. No one saw this struggle. I adapted well. I learned to function and to succeed. I formed deep connections with one person at a time, yet much of the time I felt alone in ways that were difficult to explain.

Somewhere along the way, a quiet belief took root. Not to say too much. Not to show too much. Not to feel too openly. Not to be too much.

These stories do not simply remain in childhood. They quietly transition into adulthood with us. They shape the people we choose, the places where we feel at home, and the places where we do not. They move beneath the surface of our lives in ways that are not always visible but are deeply present.

It took me many years to understand why I found a home in art. In painting, I could take as much space as I needed. On paper, I could say everything that moved inside me. In writing, I did not have to become smaller. These were places where I could live more fully, places where the inner world did not need to be reduced or explained. But the real challenge was always elsewhere, between people, in closeness and intimacy and love, in the simple and difficult question of whether I could be fully myself in the presence of another human being and still feel safe there.

For many years, my instinct was to minimize myself. I muffled what I felt. I held things inside. I measured my words before speaking. I tried to make sure what I shared wouldn't feel too heavy for the other person. Even today, I sometimes feel that old movement inside me, the urge to become smaller, to be easier, to take up less space. I understand now that this movement belongs to the past, even if it has not completely disappeared. It still lives somewhere in the body, appearing in moments of closeness and uncertainty. Learning to live differently has become a kind of practice, learning to pause before silencing myself, learning to trust what I feel, and learning to let my voice exist without apology.

Little by little, I am discovering that depth is not always a burden to others. There are people who are not frightened by what lives inside us. There are people who want to see. There are people who are moved by honesty and who feel closer, not farther away, when something real is spoken. Finding those people has become part of the journey. Perhaps the deepest courage in a life is the courage to be who we are, not only in solitude or in art, but in the presence of another person, to remain open, to remain real, to remain ourselves.

I am still learning. Slowly, I am learning that allowing ourselves to be who we are is where everything begins. I was never too much. I was learning how to live in places that did not always know how to hold me, and to find the places and the people where I do not need to become smaller. The movement to silence myself belongs to the past. Who I am is not too much. I am simply alive.