You are the kind of girl most people don’t know how to handle. You are a force of nature, a summer storm come to rattle the Earth. You are a car going 90 in a 60 mph zone and the loud, booming laughter that bubbles from deep in your core. You are bigger than the world expects you to be. You are “too much.”

Women are told they can only take up too much space; you’ve been told you’ve already used up your quota. They expect you to restrict yourself and shrink, to fit into their standards of what is considered “just enough” — not too emotional, not too loud, not too opinionated, not too sensitive. Only then are you lovable.

But it’s bullshit — all of it is bullshit.

You’ve been made to believe that you are a burden when you are truly a gift. They tell you that you are “too much” because the don’t know how to tell you the truth — that they are the ones who lack the ability to feel the way you do. Maybe they know, deep down, that they don’t deserve someone like you.

Because you love so, so much — unapologetically, unconditionally. You care to your very core. You are the kind of person who feels everything so acutely, whether that be happiness or hurt. Others cannot understand the depths of your emotion. It scares them.

Sometimes it scares you, too. They’ve made you believe that it should. Sometimes you wish you could change, to be like all the other girls they tell you are “just enough.” Sometimes, you wish you could be anyone else but you.

But don’t listen to those voices — not theirs, not yours. Don’t let them get the best of you. Don’t let them convince you that you are anything short of perfect. You are acceptable. You are needed.

So be unapologetically yourself. You are allowed to feel, and to want, and to believe. You are allowed to hope for more than they deem appropriate. You are allowed to take up space, to be loud, to think for yourself and to love deeply, fiercely. You are allowed to be everything you are — you don’t have to change that for anyone.

You are a rare kind of beauty people will spend lifetimes searching for. You are lightning in a bottle, a once-in-a-century phenomenon. You are not “too much.” You are the perfect amount.