The Fear of Fullness

Sometimes I feel so insatiable I have to protect myself from it.

Like if I admit how badly I want—love, closeness, good food, good wine, to be held, to be understood—

if I let even one small drop in,

I’ll gorge and gorge and gorge myself into oblivion.

There are days when it feels like letting myself need anything is dangerous.

Like wanting is a mouth I can’t close.

A wound I can’t stitch.

And I think that tells me something true—not about who I am now, but about where I’ve been.

About deprivation. Scarcity. Loneliness so thick it coated everything sweet in desperate shame.

Because when you’ve been without something essential for too long, you stop understanding what “enough” means.

We don’t always know how to name hunger unless it’s emptiness.

We don’t know how to trust abundance unless it’s already fading.

I want love. But not just any love.

I want the kind that moves me.

That makes me more than I was.

The kind that terrifies me with how much I could become inside it.

But I don’t want it to kill me. I don’t want it to consume me, swallow me whole, and leave me nothing of myself.

That’s the thing.

I used to believe that love would.

That feeling that much would take me under.

That to fully feel joy, or grief, or yearning, would be a death sentence.

But what if that was just a story scarcity taught me?

What if it’s not the feeling itself that’s unbearable, but the isolation of not having anyone to share it with?

What if we only fear being full because no one ever taught us how to digest what we were given?

I’ve made a career of slaughtering my darlings.

There are times I’ve sat in silence after joy and felt it echo like grief. Sometimes before the good thing was even over.

Times I’ve cried harder from being held than from being abandoned.

Because when your nervous system has learned to survive on scraps, love doesn’t feel like nourishment—it feels like a threat.

Your body doesn’t register “safe.”

It registers unfamiliar.

And unfamiliar, for many of us, means dangerous.

We are not taught how to metabolize goodness.

We are taught to brace for its disappearance.

So many of us are walking around with the wiring of famine children.

Even if there’s a feast now, our palms still cup the air like we’re begging for crumbs withheld in a past life.

Some of us never learned that we could stop running.

Stop performing. Stop self-denying. Stop pretending we don’t care.

We learned how to starve beautifully.

How to make absence look elegant.

How to dress our desperation in detachment so no one could call us needy.

But I want to be needed.

I want to need.

I want to yearn and not die.

I want to say: I am hungry for love.

And not feel ashamed.

I want to eat the world, swallow the pit and not go to hell at the end.

I want to feel, fully, what it means to ache without thinking I’ve already failed, or that what I yearn for is somehow cursed by my wanting of it.

I want to know what fullness tastes like. Not just once. Not just fleeting.

But as something I return to again and again. Something I learn to trust.

Something I learn to live inside.

Grief is teaching me.

It’s taking me apart and rebuilding me in pieces that feel truer.

It’s an ache that moves me. Softens me. Refuses to let me stay untouched.

I want to let it.

I want to let desire remake me. Let joy make me unfamiliar to myself.

Let rest remind me I am not only valuable when I am hungry, striving, producing.

Let love ruin my old, brittle ideas of worth.

You don’t have to be starving to be holy.

You don’t have to be empty to be good.

You are allowed to want.

You are allowed to want a lot.

You are allowed to have something beautiful and not lose it all.

You are allowed to be full.

And when fullness feels scary, when it feels like it might kill you, that’s not because it will.

It’s because it didn’t used to be safe.

But it can be now.

We can build lives that teach our bodies how to stay.

We can name the hunger without being consumed by it.

We can feel everything and still survive.

And not just survive—

but soften.

Unlearn.

Receive.

Return.

Stay.

We can fucking have it all.

And we don’t have to bleed for it.

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If this piece spoke to something in you—if my writing has ever helped you feel seen, softened, or strengthened—I want to gently ask for your support.

I’ve just begun my writing sabbatical in Sicily, where I’m tending to my health, my creativity, and the slow work of writing my book. I’ll be sharing more pieces like this, more glimpses into the journey, and more ways I’m learning to keep the fire lit—even in uncertain times.

Direct support is something I’m still learning how to ask for, and I’m practicing saying thank you more often, more fully. Your support helps me create spaciousness to write, rest, and keep building this work with care.

If you feel moved to contribute, here are the ways to do that:

• Venmo: @Jamila-Bradley

• CashApp: $JBradley8

• GoFundMe: Jamila’s Writing Sabbatical and Health Journey

Thank you for being here. Thank you for holding space. Thank you for helping me keep going.