I’m 30 soon and I don’t deal in regrets, but I come closest when I look back on the last decade and count the moments where I instinctually deferred to the expectations of others without checking my own pulse. I use the word “instinctually” when it’s not, not really. From childhood on, women are shooed away from any personal pulse-taking — instead of figuring out who we are as individuals, we’re encouraged to locate an external archetype and align ourselves with it. To find a planet with an “appealing” orbit and sync up. To self-help ourselves into an inoffensive cookie-cutter shape that satiates the people around us at the expense of our own hunger, because the supposed communal appetite holds more value than ours.