I walk into a health club locker room and feel an immediate impulse toward scrutiny, the kneejerk measuring of self against other: 'That one has great thighs, this one's gained weight, who's thin, who's fat, how do I compare?'
Tiny slices, no frosting, forty-five minutes on the StairMaster: These are the conditions, variations on a theme of vigilance and self-restraint that I've watched women dance to all my life, that I've danced to myself instinctively and still have to work to resist.
For years, I ate the same foods every day, in exactly the same manner, at exactly the same times.
There is a particular whir of agitation about female hunger, a low-level thrumming of shoulds and shouldn'ts and can'ts and wants that can be so chronic and familiar it becomes a kind of feminine Muzak, easy to dismiss, or to tune out altogether, even if you're actively participating in it.
A lot of people, quite frankly, think intense attachments to animals are weird and suspect, the domain of people who can't quite handle attachments to humans.
You'll reach into your wallet to brandish a photograph of a new puppy, and a friend will say, 'Oh, no - not pictures.'
The clothes are different: pre-dog, I used to be very finicky and self-conscious about how I looked; now I schlep around in the worst clothing - big heavy boots, baggy old sweaters, a hooded down parka from L.L. Bean that makes me look like an astronaut.
I don't think that the world would be a better place if everyone owned a dog, and I don't think that all relationships between dogs and their owners are good, healthy, or enriching.
I've always walked around with the sense that the world is not a safe place. I didn't get the spontaneous gene or the adventure one, really. After going through the day with its stresses, when I shut that door at night, I don't have to deal with anything but dinner, 'E.R.' and my bathrobe.
When you love somebody, or something, it's amazing how willing you are to overlook the flaws.
I saw my parents as model grown-ups, and their manner, their silence, informed my sense of what adulthood looked and felt like. Grown-ups behaved rationally and calmly. Grown-ups worked during the day and came home at night and sat down for drinks and passed the evening quietly.
When you study a dog you love, you find beauty in every small detail, and so it is with Lucille: I have become enchanted by the small asymmetrical whorls of white fur on either side of her chest, and by her tail, which she carries in a high confident curve, and by her eyes, which are watchful and intelligent, the color of chestnuts.
I eat breakfast pretty much 'round the clock - muffins in the morning, scones for lunch, cereal at night - which may be odd but is also oddly satisfying, if only because the choice is my own.
Solitude is a breeding ground for idiosyncrasy, and I relish that about it, the way it liberates whim.
Academic achievement was something I'd always sought as a form of reward. Good grades pleased my parents, good grades pleased my teachers; you got them in order to sew up approval.
Census figures be damned: If you choose to be alone, you're destined to spend a certain amount of time wondering why.
Why do I find the fantasy - husband, family, kids - exhausting instead of alluring? Is there something wrong with me? Do I have a life?
On the broad spectrum of solitude, I lean toward the extreme end: I work alone, as well as live alone, so I can pass an entire day without uttering so much as a hello to another human being. Sometimes a day's conversation consists of only five words, uttered at the local Starbucks: 'Large coffee with milk, please.'
Happy and alone, you say? Reclusive and merry? How oxymoronic! Pas possible! Alas, the concept is lost on so many.
By definition, memoir demands a certain degree of introspection and self-disclosure: In order to fully engage a reader, the narrator has to make herself known, has to allow her own self-awareness to inform the events she describes.
