your muchness has never been too much

alice’s work from the wonderland ; )

sometimes i wonder if the people around me have accidentally met only my shell.

maybe that's all i've ever handed them.

they know the version of me who arrives on time, who color-codes files, who thinks before speaking. they know the one whose face naturally settles into seriousness, whose silence gets mistaken for distance, whose caution gets translated into coldness. somewhere along the way, i became "organized," "calculated," maybe even "mataray."

i don't blame them.

if i only met myself in hallways and classrooms, i would probably think the same thing.

but today i printed tiny stickers for my keyboard.

they weren't even the right size. some leaned too far to the left. others refused to line up neatly. i could have reprinted everything. i almost did. instead, i laughed, pressed them down anyway, and realized they looked... happier this way.

now my laptop is overflowing with stickers. flowers bloom beside shortcut keys. little characters peek from the corners. the black surface is almost impossible to find beneath all the pink. my wallpaper matches my lock screen. even the websites i visit have somehow inherited the same rosy universe.

it's excessive.

it's impractical.

it's wonderfully mine.

and somewhere between smoothing out a crooked sticker and changing my wallpaper for the fifth time this month, an uncomfortable thought appeared.

what if this is the version of me that makes me happiest?

not the polished one.

not the minimalist one.

not the perfectly symmetrical one.

—but the one who thinks that too many stickers is exactly enough.

the one who changes her hair color whenever her heart asks for a different season. red one year, blue another, maybe rainbow someday, maybe a shade that doesn’t even have the right name yet. not because she’s searching for herself, but because she likes the idea that a person can bloom more than once. the one who cannot walk past a plushie without imagining where it would sit on her bed, who finds herself reaching for stuffed animals, tiny keychains, ribbons, charms, stickers she absolutely does not need, simply because they make ordinary days feel a little softer. the one who secretly believes life deserves more colors than people allow themselves.

then another thought followed close behind.

what if nobody knows this person exists?

what if they have already decided who i am?

maybe they think i would choose clean desks over cluttered joy. that i'd prefer monochrome over pink. that i'd peel off the crooked sticker because perfection matters more than affection. maybe they think i'm too practical to surround myself with little things that exist for no reason except that they make me smile.

but they don't know that i looked at those uneven keys and smiled wider because they weren't perfect.

they looked loved.

sometimes i worry that i've become so good at protecting myself that people mistake the armor for the person wearing it. the carefulness becomes my personality. the composure becomes my identity. the guardedness becomes the whole story.

meanwhile, inside me lives someone collecting tiny pieces of delight wherever she can find them. someone who gets embarrassingly excited over stationery, wallpapers, matching widgets, changing hair colors, plushies with sleepy little faces, tiny charms hanging from bags, pastel colors, stickers that never quite line up, and things that exist for no reason except that they make the world gentler. i start counting these little joys and suddenly they feel embarrassingly visible. too many stuffed toys. too much pink. too many stickers. too many little trinkets. too many things that serve no purpose except making me happy.

too much.

and i wonder if that’s what people would think if they ever stepped into my tiny world. not that i’m happy. just that i’m ... too much.

but maybe "too much" only exists in rooms that have forgotten how to play.

when i was younger, i thought growing up meant slowly peeling away the colorful parts of yourself until all that remained was something clean, polished, and acceptable. somewhere along the way, minimalism became synonymous with maturity, as though adulthood demanded empty desks, neutral colors, and carefully curated personalities. i tried to believe that too. i thought perhaps one day i'd stop wanting pink keyboards, stuffed animals, tiny charms, whimsical wallpapers, and shelves overflowing with little things that simply made me smile.

instead, i found myself becoming even more enchanted.

sometimes i think my heart has always belonged somewhere closer to wonderland. alice never questioned why flowers talked, why tea never ended, or why nonsense deserved a place beside reason. and then there was the mad hatter, who smiled as if the world had simply forgotten one important rule: you’re entirely bonkers. but i’ll tell you a secret. all the best people are.

maybe my version of wonderland is quieter. it lives inside pink wallpapers, crooked stickers, changing hair colors, plushies squeezed between pillows, shelves cluttered with tiny treasures, and objects that don’t need to justify their existence. maybe it isn’t childish. maybe it’s simply the place where the part of me that still believes life should be decorated has chosen to live.

and maybe that’s the reason why i decorate everything i own.

maybe i'm trying to leave little windows behind.

proof that beneath the neatly folded version of me lives someone who has always loved colorful things.

someone whimsical.

someone softer than she knows how to introduce.

perhaps people don't know who i truly am.

or perhaps i've only been fluent in showing them my defenses.

either way, i'm beginning to think that every crooked sticker is a tiny confession.

i have always been there.