To Be A Soft Person
“You’re just too sensitive. Too soft. Too Delicate.”
I cannot tell you how many times that has trickled off someone’s lips in my direction.
Up until quite recently, I thought that being soft was some sort of flaw or disadvantage. That there was something wrong with caring and being vocal and that it was somehow always 'too much’. Too much for me to feel, too much for other people to understand. I’ve spent my life being scolded for being the way that I am, so surely there must be something wrong with it? With me?
I’ve since realised, and am still actively training myself to see it in this way, that being soft is the best thing a person can be. It’s the best thing about the person I am. To be soft in a world that has tried so desperately to make you otherwise, is an accomplishment beyond comprehension. This life we live in is as cruel as it is kind and to be able to still believe in rain in the middle of a drought? There’s something really special in that.
I spill my heart out over the internet on a regular basis. I send texts and voice notes to my friends declaring my love. I make a point of thanking bus drivers and telling shop assistants to have a nice day. I move snails out of the path to my house so they don’t get trodden on. Explain out loud like they could possibly understand. I send messages to strangers so they know someone believes in them. Give drunken pep talks in nightclub toilets and smoking areas of bars. Make sure those girls know how brilliant they look.
Sometimes I tear up when I see elderly people walking around a supermarket alone. I wonder what stories they have to tell, who gets the privilege of loving them and if they’re still alive. I get worried that the person with the nice outfit that I passed on the street will mistake my admiration stares as something malice. All I want is everybody always to know how much they are appreciated. That they matter. Even to hearts who don’t know them, who’ll probably never even see them again.
I’m madly in love with people. I don’t know why. Sometimes I wish I could switch it off, but it’s always there, buzzing beneath the surface, threatening to overflow.
I’ve not had the best run with relationships throughout my life, romantic and platonic, and it’s left me with a disdain towards my muchness. Keep your cards close to your chest, I’ve been told. It’s easier to pretend that you don’t care than to admit you care more than we’ve been taught we should. It hurts less.
Except, it doesn’t does it?
I like pouring myself out on street corners and being vulnerable and even telling the man at the bar who’s trying to take me home the things that I should’ve kept quiet until at least date number five. It’s taken me a long time to realise that loving with your whole heart is really special, that feelings are the best part of being alive. Even when they feel more like a hurricane than a summer’s day. If I’m going to be in love with the messy beautiful people that live in this world of ours, I need to include myself in that.
To be soft is to be honest and genuine and admit that maybe a slight raise of a voice can feel like your heart is being stomped on. That you’re infatuated with the person who serves you coffee every morning or the one who regularly sits across from you on the bus. That yeah maybe the world hasn’t been so warm to you, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got to be cold. That you need to stop loving and feeling and weeping in public toilets.
To all my fellow softies out there, the people who love hard and feel in a spectrum of colour; know that you are a special breed of human. Yes, they can call you ‘too much’, but who are they to decide that that is a bad thing? I’d rather be a garden full of flowers than a freshly mowed lawn and I hope you would too. Embrace it. Love loudly and fiercely and live tenderly and brave.
Your softness is your superpower.
