Let me tell you what I learned on the other side of hurt,

took a year of silence but I finally got the work,

done — the processing, the crying, all the middle nights,

and what I found at the bottom of it was just light,

plain and clear and simple: I wasn't too much,

you were just too little — couldn't handle my touch,

my laugh, my need, my love in its fullest size,

and I spent too long apologizing for my own eyes,

for the way I see everything, for the way I feel,

for the intensity of something this completely real,

but I was never the problem — let me say that twice,

the problem was you couldn't hold me at any price.

They'll tell you: dial it back, be less, want less, take less space,

I say: find someone who can look you in the face.

Too much — yeah that's what you called it every single time,

too much loving, too much feeling, too much rhyme,

too much — yeah maybe, but baby hear me say:

the right one won't run from everything I lay,

the right one won't flinch at the size of what I bring,

too much for you was just enough — was everything,

too much for you was just exactly right for me.

I used to make myself smaller when I felt you pulling back,

swallow half the need, hold the laugh, step off the track,

apologize for wanting what I always had the right to want,

like my hunger for a real love was something to confront,

I said sorry for the tears when they came in the night,

said sorry for the silence when the silence wasn't right,

I bent myself in angles I was never built to hold,

gave you the warmth of everything and kept myself the cold,

but I been turned up this high since the day I opened my eyes,

and the right love meets you there — it doesn't ask you to minimize,

nobody before you made me feel like I was too large,

and nobody after you will ever be in charge.

They'll tell you: dial it back, be less, want less, take less space,

I say: find someone who can look you in the face.

Too much — yeah that's what you called it every single time,

too much loving, too much feeling, too much rhyme,

too much — yeah maybe, but baby hear me say:

the right one won't run from everything I lay,

the right one won't flinch at the size of what I bring,

too much for you was just enough — was everything,

too much for you was just exactly right for me.

I am not a problem waiting to be solved,

not a volume to be cut, not a crisis to be resolved,

I am a woman who loved you with her whole entire chest,

I gave you my whole Sunday and my Monday and my best,

I gave you every version of myself I had to give,

and the only failure here was you — now let me live,

in the size I was always meant to be.

Too much — yeah that's what you called it every single time,

too much loving, too much feeling, too much rhyme,

too much for you was just enough — was everything,

too much for you was just exactly right for me.