It starts with self-doubt.

As a normal girl living in the normal world, society’s expectations to you have always just been that—expectations. They weren’t rules to follow, nor a course you were forced to swallow against your will; expectations are simply suggestions on the way you should be living, with no punishment for choosing the path of why not. But, if there was a punishment for why you weren’t as beautiful as someone else, or as talented or as well-spoken as another, you found it often took the malevolent shape of your own inner voice asking you repeatedly in the middle of the night, or on the streets passing cafes and glamorous shoppers, of why don’t you look that way? Wouldn’t more people love you if you did? Wouldn’t life be easier?

And the answer, of course, had always been yes.