Happy And Alone, You Say?

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.

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.

So It Persists, For Many Of Us, Hunger Channeled Into Some Internal Circuitry Of Longing, Routed This Way And That, Emerging In A Thousand Different Forms. The Diet Form, The Romance Form, The Addiction Form, The Overriding Hunger For This Purchase Or That Job, This Relationship Or That One. Hunger May Be Insatiable By Nature, It May Be Fathomless, But Our Will To Fill It, Our Often Blind Tenacity In The Face Of It, Can Be Extraordinary.

Passivity Is Corrosive To The Soul; It Feeds On Feelings Of Integrity And Pride, And It Can Be As Tempting As A Drug.

The Real Struggle Is About You: You, A Person Who Has To Learn To Live In The Real World, To Inhabit Her Own Skin, To Know Her Own Heart, To Stop Waiting For Life To Begin.