The list that follows is, of necessity, abridged:
1. I’m nearsighted.
2. My right ring finger is deformed because of a vicious dog attack, a multiply misdiagnosed fracture, and an imperfect surgical intervention.
3. I have hurt people dear to me, sometimes intentionally.
4. For years, I was messy and imprecise with money. I was not raised this way. On the contrary, I was raised to be very conservative with and conscientious about my money.
5. My oncologist says postmenopausal women generally have a uterus the size of a hot dog. Instead, mine, he says, is the size of a pencil because of radiation treatments to the pelvis.
6. Whenever I hear recordings of my voice, I’m taken aback by my tone: sometimes imperious, sometimes whiny, sometimes shrewlike, sometimes just surprisingly unfamiliar. Never dulcet.
7. I can be shrewlike.
8. I nag.
9. Some grudges, I hold.
10. I’m a lackadaisical housekeeper.
11. Over the years, I bought a lot of stuff that went unused or was only minimally used, certainly not enough to justify purchase of it.
12. Now I need to go through all that stuff, and the fact and reality and magnitude of it often overwhelms and paralyzes me.
13. I am absolutely capable of being not nice.
14. I thought I had all the answers for too long.
15. I thought I was bulletproof, health-wise, like my mother. Instead, I’m breakable, health-wise, like my father.
16. I sold my family home instead of moving in to it.
17. I moved to a place that requires far too much driving.
18. I spend way too much time indoors.
19. I thought there were conditions one could create to raise a perfect child. I religiously cleaved to those conditions, until I abandoned them.
20. I often watch too many episodes per sitting of whatever I’m watching: Sopranos, Poldark, Justified, you name it.
21. I have a dead tooth in my head that’s root-canaled.
22. I’m told I snore.
23. I don’t take ice-cold, 90-second showers every morning, even though I’m familiar with Wim Hoff’s protocol, even though I know it will help my body to produce desirable brown fat.
24. Visual-spatial intelligence—I don’t have it.