I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris

by Glynnis MacNicol

I don’t want to fight any battles. I don’t actually want to do anything. But how does one do nothing?

Culturally speaking, man leaves wife for younger woman is not news. It is un-news. It is the norm. It is more than the norm. It is the air that we breathe. It is the blood in our veins.

Movement is only enjoyable when it’s a choice. Bookended by places of respite and permanence.

No one, it seems, has ever successfully solved the problem of what happens if you meet yourself.

I know plenty. I am not here to learn. I am here to feel. Perhaps I have simply unleashed myself.

without outside affirmation, I’m still left with the responsibility of having to trust that simply feeling enjoyment is evidence enough that where I am and what I’m doing is good and true and worthwhile.

I have reduced myself to a body part, which at the age of forty-six, the age I am reassured is when I can expect to slide out of every gaze and directly into invisibility, feels electrifying. If it is not true that I am made invisible by my age, what else might not be true?

I sometimes have to work to understand my life not as one long missed opportunity.