When I was a child, there was a thief. I do not know how old I was. I do not know where I was. But he came into my room, steps light upon the rug, and stole from me my heart. Stole from me my soul. He stitched rocks in their places and, with a kiss upon my forehead, he left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did not notice the heaviness for many years. I did not notice how my body rattled as I walked, how others did not seem to carry the same weight. But I did notice the scars one day, criss-crossed over my chest, where he had wrongfully stolen what was not his. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wonder, sometimes, what I might have done without those rocks tying me down to earth. Would I have leapt for joy, felt butterflies, rolled down grassy knolls with those I did not know I would love come evening? Would I have bit my tongue as often as I did, would I have found the courage to say yes? Would I have allowed myself to go swimming, even if it was just to experiment? To see if I liked it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I take the rocks out now, one by one. They are heavy, and I bleed. But I press on. A rock as often as I can handle comes from my chest. And I set it down, roll it away. Perhaps one day I will find the thief again. Perhaps I will find him and take back what was mine. But for now, maybe I will cultivate a new heart, a new soul, built in the remains of a rocky place. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was a child, there was a thief. I do not know how old I was. I do not know where I was. But he came into my room, steps light upon the rug, and stole from me my heart. Stole from me my soul. He stitched rocks in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[525],"tags":[526,241,597,12,336,595,596,97],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27tjX-sS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1791,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions\/1791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}