Anatomy of a Person They Keep Describing

They talk about personality as if it were a choice.
As if I woke up one day and picked intensity,
picked sensitivity,
picked the way my emotions arrive without knocking.

They analyze traits like specimens under glass.
Label them.
Categorize them.
Temperament. Attachment. Disorder.
Words stacked neatly while I sit there, breathing,
trying not to disappear.

I watch her listen.
I watch the room fill with theories.
And my chest tightens with a thought I can’t stop:
What if she is learning how to leave me?

I try so hard to be good.
To soften myself.
To fit into the shape society prefers—
quiet enough, stable enough, easy enough.
But I am not made of straight lines.

They say “borderline” and suddenly I am no longer a person,
I am a warning sign.
They say “emotional,” and it sounds like a flaw,
not like the way I love deeply, notice details,
feel the world in full color.

I didn’t choose this nervous system.
I didn’t choose a heart that reacts before it protects itself.
I didn’t choose to feel joy and fear at the same volume.

And yet here I am,
sitting with trembling hands,
wondering who could ever want someone like me.

I feel like an anomaly in a classroom of rules.
Like a storm trying to pass as weather.
Like something that needs to be explained away
instead of understood.

The worst part isn’t that they talk.
It’s that I start to believe them.
That I start translating their words into a single sentence:
You are too much.

I look at her through a screen and she feels far away,
and my mind fills the distance with catastrophes.
I imagine her deciding things without me.
I imagine being left quietly, logically, reasonably.

But here is the truth I keep forgetting:
having a mental health condition does not make me unlovable.
Having strong emotions does not make me dangerous.
Being complex does not make me disposable.

I am not a diagnosis walking.
I am not a lesson example.
I am a person who feels intensely because I care intensely.

Maybe love won’t always choose me.
That hurts more than I can put into words.
But that does not mean I am unworthy of it.

Right now I am scared.
I am overwhelmed.
I am listening to people describe me like a concept
while I am actively trying to survive the moment.

So I write.
Not to be fixed.
Not to be forgiven.
But to remind myself that I exist beyond their language.

I am still here.
Even shaking.
Even afraid.
Even unfinished.

Onnaya