The Thief starts her shift before you’ve even cleared the fog of sleep.
You stand before your hangers and watch your hand go past the piece that stirs something. Instead, it settles on the safe blazer, the neutral knit, the shades of gray and black that promise to keep you invisible. It’s a choice normally made to ensure you aren’t read by the room.
If that sounds anything like your morning, stay with me.
I was six years old the first time someone told me I was "too big." In first grade, you don’t have the filter to refuse a verdict like that. You take it as the truth and do everything you can to prevent that same pain of being called something you don’t want to be, ever again. From that day on, I began the long work of shrinking the woman I was becoming.
The way my spine slumped.
The scale of my wanting.
The volume of my arrival.
The very subjects I got degrees in.
But when you look at the architecture of that moment, it was just a fabricated rule handed to a child. Stay small and you’ll stay safe.
I followed it because that’s what our young brains do to survive. And part of that survival birthed the Thief, who’s primary job was to make sure I stayed small no matter what.
But the bigness leaked out of my seams anyway. I wore baggy clothes for years because my energy needed a bigger room. You can throw a cloth over a lamp, but the light still finds its way out.
Whatever old rule is currently dictating your choices: you have permission to hand it back. It was never your truth.
PUT ON the piece you keep saving for a smaller version of you. Just one. The woman who was always meant to be big is finished with the waiting.
