I remember a poem by Blythe Baird where she talked about being a feminist but feeling the urge to hide it at social events, to not mention it, to resist conversation around the issue even though she was passionate about it. She called this "pocket-sized feminism".

I think we all have full pockets. We all have things that we want to share with those around us but choose not to. We have our hands deep in things we care about. We put away things that we care about and are passionate about to make those around us feel comfortable. I believe when we put everything in our pockets, we'll eventually run out of room. What are our pockets full of? What are we, as individuals, filled with? Are these the same? Are the very things we embody being shoved down and put away? What is pocket-sized in our lives?

It reminds me of Halloween when you knew which houses gave out king-sized candy bars by some vague description of outdoor decor or a marginally unique porch light? When rumors would start about "the house with the statue in the lawn that gave out the big kit kats". We want the king size. We need the big version. The one that fills us up. The one that won't fit in our pockets. The one we want to brag about and tell everyone we know.

We need to focus on who we are, what we want, what we deserve, what we are passionate about because we can't lose these things. When they are pocket-sized, they get lost. We forget about them. We put them to the side. Instead, we need these things to fill us up, to make us the people we want to be.

I have spent so much time focused on tucking away parts of myself. I spent years being anxious about being too annoying or too talkative or too awkward or just too much. I was scared of being too much for people and shrunk myself down to try to adapt my personality to what others wanted them to be. I think in my relationships with others, I found myself trying to fit in a fun-sized mold. However, the thing about fun-sized, is it's just that; it's fun. It won't fill you up. It won't make you feel whole. It doesn't satisfy you. It may be nice for a moment, but it won't last.

I think in the short term, fun-sized friendships are what we want. We like to only give a piece of ourselves, we want things to be easy and simple and fun. We want the basics. But the gravity of the situation is that life is not fun-sized. Shit happens. We go through hard challenges. We struggle. We get stressed out. We have our own pasts and a variety pack of individualized experiences. Fun is not enough sometimes. Things aren't always going to be sweet and simple. And when things get tough, our pocket-sized persona isn't going to be enough. Bite-sized support won't help us. We need the real thing.

Especially in today's climate, we need full-sized friendships to get through what might be the hardest year yet. We are in a time where basic human rights are deemed "political" and every conversation feels like it could be controversial. This season of life is online and we can't fit into a text box all the time. We need to be everything. We can't keep holding back anymore. There is too much happening in the world for us to try to disappear.

We need to be our fullest selves. We need to be able to have big discussions and big personalities and big conversations to be able to work through big problems. We need to be a lot. We need to be ourselves. Because regardless of how much your personality is, it's you, and the right people won't be able to get enough of it. We have to stop shrinking ourselves down. We can't let parts of us get lost or tucked away. We can't be okay with short-term satisfaction or a taste of what we want. We need to be filled. We need people who are here for all of it- not just the sample. We need to introduce who we are- and all that we are.

We are not meant to be pocket-sized people.