Dharrling Blaq

One of the strangest things about me is how quickly I adapt to the environments I enter.

I can be loud person with friends, quiet at work, careful around “family”, and completely different when I am alone.

I’ve observed that in others too. It’s like an ingrained skill as humans. We all carry different versions of ourselves into different rooms.

The question is:

Which one feels most like home?

—Blaq

What is something about yourself you changed because someone made you feel it was “too much”?
Your energy?

Your honesty?

Your excitement?

Your ambition?

—Blaq

Some people don’t become quiet because they have nothing to say.
Sometimes they become quiet because they have said enough times and learned that being heard is not the same as being understood.
—Blaq

There is something interesting about people.

They are often quick to point out the parts of someone that feel like too much.

The way you ask too many questions.

The way you follow up too often.

The way you arrive with too much energy and too many ideas.

They tell you to slow down.

To relax.

To take things one step at a time.

So you listen.

You learn to soften yourself.

You speak less.

You quiet the excitement before it becomes “too much.”

You stop showing up as often.

You stop bringing the same urgency into every room.

The questions become fewer.

You start observing more and saying less.

You make yourself smaller in spaces where you once showed up fully.

Your ideas stay tucked at the back of your mind.

You learn to read the room before entering it.

Then somehow, they notice.

They ask if everything is okay.

They say, “You don’t seem like yourself anymore.”

They wonder where your energy went.

They say, “This isn’t like you.”

Maybe it isn’t.

And maybe they are right.

Sometimes people don’t realise they are meeting the version of you they helped create.

Somewhere along the way, while trying to become easier to understand, you can accidentally become harder to recognise.

The strange thing about change is that people often notice who you become and forget the moments that made you that way.

—Blaq