It’s bad when she starts relating everything in her life to Cranberries songs. Like that’s the only way to describe it—melancholy Irish music that she doesn’t even like. But they seem so prudent, because really, do they have to let it linger? That feeling of getting open heart surgery or something without the anesthetic; like, skinning the heels of her hands and having it hurt more than anything else that happens because for some reason, scraping her palms feels like the worst thing in the world. Which is why she thinks that the whole Cranberries essence suits her just fine. Between the unnecessarily weird vocals to the lyrics that delve right into her heart and soul and shit and just—they know her. They wrote Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? with her in mind. Her and that boy, that she thinks the world of and is Such A Fool For with the necessary capitalization et al for the simple reason that he’s Just A Boy Standing In Front Of A Girl Waiting For Her To Love Him (possibly the other way around) and the pop culture side of the relationship is the only side that makes sense to her. The movies and songs that they label as “theirs” because oh, isn’t it nice to be one of those couples that has those things?

He’s got her wrapped around his finger, so much so that only the scholarly abbreviations can fill in the blanks when her thoughts can’t.

They are all-consumed by tambourine interludes in brains while she leans over to flip the tape over again. If he could see her now, he would probably dump her. Break the cassette in half so that she could never listen to the forty minute mess again, just because he’s out doing stuff and she doesn’t really have any friends except for Lois, who is not so much a friend as force of nature that is very hard to catch up with in between episodes of that one TV sitcom that she throws herself into rather than indulging in Dolores O’Riordan and frozen fish fingers.

Yeah, it’s bad.

She’s in break up mode before they’ve even broken up—if they’re even going to break up, because sometimes she thinks that they’ll never break up and other times she ticks down the days until he realizes what he has gotten himself into and needs to run as fast as he can (admittedly, pretty fast) away from the crazy half-Korean who eats too much fried food. Linda doesn’t realize how much he loves her. Her fatal flaw. She never realizes how much people love her. Because it’s easier to listen to music written for the people who do realize it and get their hearts stomped on because of it; breaking herself in two before someone else does. Linda is a girl made of concrete. She’s not letting him in until she thinks he’ll be there for good.

‘Cos what’s the point of making something work if it’s not going to?

Wishful thinking is the only kind that she does not allow herself.