Not too much, but too heavy for them

Sometimes pain is not hidden in what someone literally says, but in what slowly becomes visible between the lines, in the way hope is carefully touched and then quietly pulled back again, as though it proved too fragile to hold onto, and exactly there, in that soft but devastating moment where something briefly seemed possible before disappearing again, a silence emerges that is not empty at all, but heavy, charged, filled with questions you no longer even want to ask yourself.
Not because I am naïve, not because I believe too quickly, but because I have spent so long surviving that even the smallest glimpse of space can feel enormous, almost sacred, as if both hands inside me instinctively try to protect it before it disappears again.
And then the thought returns once more, not loudly but quietly, creeping in like an old familiar shadow appearing the moment something slips away again: am I too much, not as a person perhaps, but as a reality, as a story, as a life that cannot be neatly summarized in twenty easy sentences?
There is a moment that keeps repeating itself in different forms, with different people, yet always carrying the same painful undertone. The moment where someone slowly withdraws, not because I have done something wrong, but because my situation feels too large for them. Too layered. Too heavy. Too uncomfortably close. Not because I scream, dramatize or demand, but simply because I exist within circumstances that do not fit comfortably inside safe emotional boundaries.
And every time it happens, I feel that old sharp thought rising again: are people afraid of me because I am different?
Not because I am dangerous, but because my story does not fit inside a simple category. Because it is not a neat, solvable problem with a quick answer. Because my life is not shaped around a temporary setback, but around years of instability, dependence, exhaustion and silent survival.
What recently happened with that place, that cabin, that small piece of land that briefly felt like breathing room, touched exactly that wound again. It began with hope. Openness. Careful willingness to think along with us. For a moment I felt something I had not dared to feel in a very long time: perspective. A possible way out of the room where I have spent years trapped, nearly constantly inside my mother’s house, without real space to land or simply exist as myself.
And then came the message: it had become too complicated, too heavy, too much combined with their own situation. And somewhere between those lines I felt the unspoken conclusion settling into me once again: my reality itself had become the problem.
But what people often fail to see is that my situation was never created by a label, a diagnosis or “oversensitivity.” This could have happened to someone without autism, without high sensitivity, without any vocabulary for what is happening internally. It is the logical result of living for years in an environment where tension never fully disappears, where boundaries structurally dissolve, where safety remains fragile and where your nervous system never truly stops scanning.
When someone says it feels too heavy, I understand that on a human level. I understand their limitations, their honesty and their need for self-protection. But at the same time it hurts deeply to feel that without having done anything wrong, I once again become perceived as “too much.”
Not too much as a person. Too much as a reality. Too much as a truth someone else does not know how to hold.
And perhaps that is one of the most painful parts: that vulnerability does not always create closeness, but sometimes distance instead. That the desire for quiet, simplicity and a place in nature can become something others instinctively retreat from, as though my longing itself carries a weight they are afraid to step beneath.
Still, deep down I keep feeling that this is not truly about me as a human being. Not about my softness, my care or my honesty. It is about the mirror my situation creates. About confronting something that brushes against other people’s own limits, fears and sense of stability.
And yes, it hurts. Because this was never just “a place.” It was hope. A light in the distance. The possibility that after all these years we might finally be allowed to land somewhere, truly land somewhere. We were so certain of it that we turned down another offered place in Gelderland because it was only available temporarily and would have forced us back into the exact instability we have been trying to escape for years. We did not want another temporary solution that would eventually push us back into survival mode once again, financially and emotionally.
We were searching for something more permanent, something that would finally give us enough time to recover, breathe and carefully look toward a future without the constant terror of having to return to everything we fought so hard to leave behind. The idea of once again being dragged back into that reality already felt unbearable enough that part of me would rather leave completely than keep reliving that cycle forever.
But I refuse to believe that being different is something people should fear. I refuse to believe that my story is inherently too large to be carried by the world. Even though today I feel the heaviness of disappointment and loneliness again, I still know somewhere deep inside me that my longing for peace is not excessive. It is human.
I am not searching for perfection. I am searching for a place where survival is no longer the foundation beneath every single day, where life can slowly become something softer than endurance.
And maybe that is what this keeps coming down to, no matter how many times I am pushed back, no matter how many doors close the moment I thought one had finally stayed open long enough for me to step through them: the painful realization that reality itself can frighten people when it does not resemble the safe, manageable version of suffering they know how to respond to.
Not the urge to become harder. Not the urge to shrink myself into something easier to digest. But the determination to hold onto something quieter and stronger at the same time: the understanding that my existence does not need to become smaller in order to deserve space, that my longing for rest is not irrational, that my hope was not misplaced, only placed into hands unable to carry it long enough.
And so I remain here, despite everything, carefully open, not out of naïveté but out of resistance, out of love for a life I no longer want to merely survive but finally inhabit somewhere, on a piece of earth that does not recoil from my story but holds enough gentleness to let me exist within it.