There are certain things I grew up knowing so intimately that I never recall having learned them. One of the deepest of these, the oldest, is the idea that to express too much emotion, to be too much, is a problem. To be, as a male teacher of mine once described, ‘at the edge of your emotions’ is to be gauche, embarrassing. I associate this state—of excess of feeling—with recoil from those around me: my mother rolling her eyes; my schoolmates turning their backs, clicking together like Lego away from me.