See, I didn’t just want validation from the kids I went to high school in West Virginia with. I wanted cosmic validation. I wanted to feel anointed by the universe as though I had been specially chosen to peek outside the bounds of normal reality and to experience, even fleetingly, fame. To look at the inner workings of the show that fascinated so many people that college courses had been written about. I would get to experience that. That was amazing.

And I know that this is narcissistic but it was right there within my grasp so how could I not close my fist around it?

Anyway, it wasn’t just about validation. I still call it psychological skydiving. If I went on this show, I would see myself in the third person. I would experience myself as you see me. You guys are all probably aware of the unnerving experience of hearing your voice on a recording. It kind of challenges your view of yourself. It’s really unsettling.

Well, I was about to see everything. I was going to see the way I kiss, which as it turns out is aggressive. Arie said I was a good kisser, so whatever. I was about to see the way I walk in heels and how often I play with my hair, the way that asshole looks at me when I say something stupid. I was going to see everything. I was going to put my trust in producers whose motivations were pretty opaque.

I was going to put my image in the hands of indifferent editors to sculpt as they wish. I figured I would have to watch the episodes trembling under the bed, cradling a bottle of vodka, squinting at the TV but I would deal with my own anxiety later because, to my horror and elation, I was asked to go on the show.

But the worst part was yet to come. The part that I had been dreading more than anything was asking my boss to go on The Bachelor. The worst part is he had never even heard of it. It is difficult to truly convey the total humiliation of describing the plot of The Bachelor to your 75-year-old psychiatrist boss.

I tried to intellectualize the shit out of this. I told him all about my deep psychological reasons for going on. I even referenced Carl Jung at one point. But in the end, you can’t escape the simple reality.

“So there's like 30 of us and we’re all dating this one guy, right, and every week he dumps a couple of us until he marries the one that’s left. So can I go?”

He was not stoked about this idea but he knew how much I wanted to go on. He had a very real and legitimate concern that our very small lab couldn’t function correctly understaffed so he let me go. But I gave my lab a phone number to call if they really needed me back, if it became too stressful.

And with that, a few weeks later, I flew to LA and stepped out of a limo into total emotional upheaval.

That first night, surrounded by women and color-saturated gowns in a gaudy mansion where everything kind of seemed fake, lined up by a man wearing foundation so that another man could pick out the top 21 hottest girls to advance to the next round, I wanted to go home. It felt so tacky even degrading. But I stayed, and I made friends, and I started having a pretty good time.

When I first went on, I kind of had my career in mind. I didn’t want to appear demonstrative or judgmental so that first week when I was crying about something stupid, my producer pulled me in for an interview to see the dramatics. I felt violated and betrayed. I stood in a corner refusing to talk to him.

But maintaining a relative hold of my sanity quickly bored me because I didn’t come to hide. I came in a sense to be exposed in front of ten million people. So in the second week when I was crying over something…

Everyone is always crying on The Bachelor, by the way. Always crying. It’s like ten years of therapy for which you then need another ten years of therapy to make up for it.

So I was crying over something stupid, I pulled him into the interview because I wanted people to see me.

As for Arie, which is the name of the bachelor, I don't know whether the greater psychological challenge would be to fall in love or to resist. But as time wore on, I became increasingly interested in the former. So exactly one month into my time there, he asked me on a one-on-one date in Paris and I realized I could be on the brink of something pretty big.

He picked me up outside our hotel in a red convertible which, promptly, broke down. We laughed it off. We took an Uber to a high-end Parisian store where I purchased a $1,000 simple black dress, which I then wore to Maxim’s which is a restaurant that I had been dying to go to. It’s a five-story art nouveau masterpiece which had once been called the most famous restaurant in the world and was featured in one of my favorite old movies, Gigi. Well, production bought out the entire place.

We ate oysters and escargot. We drank scotch. We moved outside to smoke cigars off camera. Even though we had only spent like 10- to 20-minute chunks of time together every few days, this felt like a whole hell of a lot more than a first date. We had the kind of physical magnetism that kept our hands on each other at all times. He made me feel sexy when I thought that I would go in as the weird bookish girl.

He asked me about my PhD aspirations. He said that we can make anything work as long as we loved each other. We talked about marriage and kids. At one point, he gave me this look that was so full of shy and yet unmasked hope and vulnerability it’s burned into my memory. And when they replayed it on TV, I just instantly broke down crying.