“She’d always cared too much about the opinions of others. She had considered that this aching need to be liked made people like her less, that it would be stifling and repulsive to those she came in contact with, so she tried not to care so much – like a drowning person trying not to swallow so much water, as though trying would override the body’s natural instinct to gasp for air. It was a cycle that left her lungs full of water they couldn’t use and unable to take anything good in.”
