I’m Not Here to Be Palatable
There’s an old story many of us were fed:
Be easy to digest.
Be agreeable.
Be reasonable.
Be likable.
Don’t be too much.
Don’t be too sensitive.
Don’t be too angry.
Don’t be too loud.
Don’t be too honest.
Swallow your opinions.
Round off your edges.
Smile when you’d rather scream.
Because God forbid—
you made someone else uncomfortable just by being real.
Here’s the truth:
I’m not here to be palatable.
I’m not here to shrink myself into bite-sized pieces for other people’s comfort.
I’m not here to apologize for my range—my softness, my rage, my tenderness, my power.
"I am not the ripples on the surface of the water.
I am the entire ocean."
— Nayyirah Waheed
I’m here to be whole.
Not edited.
Not manicured.
Not made-for-easy-consumption.
Whole.
Soft power doesn’t mean hiding the parts of you that are sharp.
It doesn’t mean sanding yourself down until you’re smooth enough to offend no one.
Soft power means knowing you can be both velvet and steel.
That your softness is a choice—not a default setting.
It means choosing depth over likability.
It means understanding that some people will find you too much simply because they’ve made a life out of settling for less.
I’m not here to perform the easier version of myself.
And neither are you.
There are people who will misunderstand your softness.
Who will mistake your calm for weakness.
Who will bristle against your boundaries.
Who will try to make you feel wrong for growing into your own gravity.
Let them.
You weren’t made to be everyone's taste.
You were made to be true.
If you've been worrying lately about being too much, too different, too sharp, too soft—
stop.
Let yourself be all of it.
All the contradictions.
All the shifting currents.
All the bigness, the tenderness, the wildness that refuses to be tamed into something small.
You don’t need to be easier to love.
You don’t need to be easier to like.
You don’t need to be easier to hold.
You just need to be yourself—all the way.
The people who are meant for you will not require you to cut yourself into pieces first.
—
Dee
(In your corner, always.)