For years, I thought growing up meant learning to tone myself down. Now I wonder if it was actually about learning that I no longer had to.

Apparently, I have a ridiculous amount of Scorpio in my birth chart.

Sun. Moon. Rising. Mars. Pluto.

At this point, even I have questions.

And whether you believe in astrology or think the entire thing is celestial fan fiction, there is one word that keeps appearing whenever I read about these placements:

Intensity.

Intensity in emotions.

Intensity in relationships.

Intensity in desire.

Intensity in curiosity.

Intensity in basically everything.

And every time I read it, I think:

Well.

Fair enough.

Because I’ve been intense for as long as I can remember.

I Have Always Loved Too Loudly

When I was little, I asked my mum almost every day if she loved me.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes, of course I love you.”

“But how much?”

And apparently her answer was never quite enough, because then came the follow-up investigation.

Why don’t you give me a kiss?

Why don’t you hug me more?

How much do you love me?

I wanted evidence.

Preferably physical evidence.

My grandfather wasn’t particularly affectionate physically either.

Unfortunately for him, I was.

I would grab his bald head and cover it in kisses.

Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss.

I’d hug him while he basically sat there not knowing what to do with this tiny human attacking him with affection.

That was me.

I danced.

I sang.

I made noise.

I invented things.

And then I needed everybody to see what I had invented.

Once, when I was very little, I went to the river and collected what I considered to be the most beautiful stones I could find.

To me, they were treasures.

So naturally, I decided to sell them.

My uncle helped me make a little wooden tray that hung from my shoulders with string. I arranged my beautiful river stones on it and walked around the neighbourhood trying to sell them.

Looking back, I love that little girl.

She found some rocks.

Thought they were extraordinary.

And immediately decided the neighbourhood needed access to them.

There was no moderation.

If something was beautiful, it was beautiful.

If I loved you, I wanted to kiss you twenty times.

If I had an idea, we were doing it.

I wasn’t trying to be intense.

I was just completely inside whatever I was experiencing.

Then I Learned How to Make Myself Smaller

But there was another part of my childhood.

I was the only daughter of a single mother who worked a lot.

And that meant that sometimes other people had to look after me.

Sometimes I stayed with relatives.

Sometimes someone else watched me.

Sometimes my mum had to take me to work with her.

And very early, I understood something.

This isn’t my house.

Don’t make too much noise.

Don’t cause trouble.

Be easy.

Be quiet.

Behave.

Because these people were helping my mum.

And I knew my mum needed that help.

So I adapted.

I don’t remember anyone sitting me down and saying, You are too much. You need to become less.

It was subtler than that.

I learned to read the room.

I learned that there were places where I could be completely myself and places where it was safer to turn the volume down.

And I became very good at it.

Maybe a lot of us do.

We learn which version of ourselves is easiest for other people to accommodate.

Not necessarily because anyone is cruel.

Sometimes we’re simply children trying to belong to environments we didn’t create.

But if you practise shrinking for long enough, eventually you can forget that you were ever loud.

Unfortunately, the Intensity Survived

Mine certainly did.

It just found other places to go.

When I like something, I don’t casually like it.

I investigate it.

If I discover an actor I love, suddenly I need to see every film they’ve ever made.

Then I want to know where they were born.

How they started acting.

How they developed.

What happened before they became famous.

What happened after.

How did they get there?

How?

That’s the question.

I can do it with films.

Psychology.

Astrology.

Pilates.

Exercise.

Books.

A colour.

For a while, apparently, pink.

I’ll go through periods when I read and read and read.

Periods when all I want to do is exercise.

Periods when I decide I’m not drinking and simply don’t drink.

When something captures me, I can disappear inside it with the concentration of a small child playing while the entire world continues around them.

I love that feeling.

I love being absorbed by something.

I love wanting to know more.

I love having goals.

I love reaching them and immediately becoming curious about what comes next.

And yes, sometimes my brain is an absolute mess because of it.

But I wouldn’t trade it.

I Don’t Really Understand How People Live Without It

This might sound ridiculous, but sometimes I genuinely struggle to understand people who aren’t intense.

How do you live?

I’m serious.

I want a night out to become a night out.

Maybe we have an unexpectedly deep conversation.

Maybe we end up dancing somewhere ridiculous.

Maybe I passionately kiss someone.

Maybe we stay out until daylight.

Maybe absolutely nothing goes according to plan.

But something happened.

We lived it.

And that’s how I tend to experience everything.

When I’m sad, I’m sad.

When I’m happy, I’m ridiculously happy.

When I’m interested, I want to know everything.

When I love, I love.

When something ends, I’ll probably feel the ending too.

And then eventually something else begins.

There’s something about that movement that I find fascinating.

Maybe that’s why I’ve never really wanted a perfectly flat life.

I want to experience it.

Growing Up Didn’t Make Me Less Intense

It did, however, teach me some things.

When you’re young, intensity can spill everywhere.

You show everything.

You give everything.

Every feeling feels urgent.

Every connection can feel significant.

Every fascination deserves your complete attention.

Growing older has made me more selective.

I don’t need everybody to know everything I’m feeling.

I don’t need to expose every part of myself just because it’s there.

I’ve learned that privacy isn’t the same thing as repression.

I’ve learned that boundaries don’t make an emotion less real.

I’ve learned that I can feel something enormously without immediately needing to do something about it.

That’s probably the biggest difference.

I didn’t become less intense. I became more responsible for my intensity.

And I think that’s a much better deal.

I Don’t Want to Turn the Volume Down Anymore

There is something else adulthood gave me that childhood couldn’t.

Choice.

When I was little, sometimes I needed other people.

I needed someone to watch me.

I needed someone to let me stay in their house.

I needed adults to accommodate me because my mum had to work.

Being easy made sense.

Being quiet sometimes made sense.

I don’t judge that little girl for learning how to adapt.

She was smart.

She understood the situation.

But I’m not her anymore.

I don’t need to make myself smaller so somebody will keep me around.

I don’t want to reduce my excitement because someone finds enthusiasm embarrassing.

I don’t want to pretend I care less than I do because caring deeply might expose me.

I don’t want to love halfway just to guarantee I won’t get hurt.

And maybe most importantly, I don’t need everybody to meet me at exactly the same level.

For a long time, I think intensity and reciprocity got tangled together.

If I give this much, will you give this much?

If I love like this, will you love like this?

If I’m excited about you, are you equally excited about me?

I’m starting to see those things differently.

My capacity to feel belongs to me.

My capacity to love belongs to me.

My honesty belongs to me.

My enthusiasm belongs to me.

I don’t need to turn them into a transaction.

Of course relationships need reciprocity to survive.

But I don’t need someone else’s reaction to validate the fact that I genuinely felt something.

I can give because I wanted to give.

Love because I loved.

Be honest because that’s how I want to live.

And still recognise when something isn’t for me.

That’s freedom I didn’t have before.

Maybe Intensity Was Never the Problem

This is why that silly Scorpio image stayed with me.

Not because I suddenly discovered my personality through astrology.

I knew all of this already.

Astrology simply put a word in front of me that made me look at something differently.

Intensity.

For years, intensity sounded like something that needed managing.

Too emotional.

Too excited.

Too invested.

Too loud.

Too curious.

Too much.

Now?

I love that I’m intense.

I love that I can become fascinated by something.

I love that I can reinvent parts of my life because I’ve suddenly discovered a better way of doing them.

I love that I can be moved by people.

By ideas.

By places.

By music.

By a conversation.

By a stupid collection of rocks I once thought were beautiful enough to sell door to door.

There are still plenty of things I want that I don’t have yet.

There are achievements I haven’t reached.

There are parts of my life I’m still building.

But somewhere along the way, something much more important happened.

I started genuinely liking the person who is going to live that life.

Maybe that’s why I no longer want to become less intense.

I don’t think growing up was supposed to turn the volume down.

Maybe it was supposed to teach me when to turn it up, when to protect it, when to walk away — and, most importantly, that I don’t need permission to take up the space I once learned to surrender.

Maybe I was never too much.

Maybe I was just learning what to do with all of me.

What part of yourself did you learn to make smaller before you were old enough to decide whether it actually needed changing?