WHITNEY RILEY

You're wearing your favorite outfit. Something about today feels right. And then someone says you look tired — and just like that, the whole thing collapses. What follows is the scanning, the replaying, the conversation you reconstruct at 2am. And if that feels familiar, I want you to know: you're not doing this because you're fragile. You're doing it because something in you learned, at a time when it had no other options, that another person's approval was required for ever