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was having my hair done when my townhouse was broken into. And trust me, “I was touching up my highlights” isn’t the answer you want to give when an officer asks where you’ve been because, hey, did you notice the three police cars in your driveway? And that all the lights in your house are on? What about your front door being wide open? You guessed it—all your most important material belongings in the world have been swiped.

On top of the fear I immediately felt, I was embarrassed to admit that while my home was getting ransacked, I was being coiffed and primped, coddled and complimented by my hairstylist whose job was 90 percent cutting my hair and 10 percent maintaining my ego. (When you’re a 30-something, single girl in Dallas, searching for a man who likes his women au naturel—with crow’s feet and without silicone—that 10 percent of an ego boost is not just nice, but necessary.)

If only I had a better answer for the officer—that I was helping at a soup kitchen or visiting my grandmother. I mumbled that I had been getting my hair cut and then wished I’d brought my hairdresser along with me. Smile at the officer, he would have encouraged me. Show him you’re worth a million bucks, even if you feel five cents short of a nickel.

At first all I could think of was how many bucks it would take to replace the items that had been stolen. It was the first time I’d been robbed; I didn’t know I should be wondering what else I’d find missing after the material items had been categorized, the police report finished.

If these punk neighborhood kids knew that the thing I prided myself on most was the ability to live independently and alone, would they have stomped all over that by kicking in my door to get their hands on my computer?

Of course they would have, I reminded myself for weeks as I lay in bed at night, watching the clock and listening for any hint of suspicious noises. “It’s not personal,” the fingerprint duster said when she came in the noisy wake of the officers’ departure. “Just remember that, sweetheart.” And then on her way out the door, she squeezed my arm. She likely knew how hard it is to convince yourself that a crime committed against you can actually have nothing to do with you.

In a way, the timing was ironic. For years I’d been living on my own in places like Boston, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Denver, cities where crime seemed “more likely” to strike. I was always in rental apartments, almost always in transitional neighborhoods.

My parents would look at the addresses I chose warily, wondering why I wouldn’t use my inflated advertising salary to buy some safety. I saw bohème, but they saw recklessness. They wanted me to invest in security, but I saw a home I’d leave in a year or two. There was always another city to explore, so why not keep life light and easy?

Then just a couple months before the break-in, I’d finally decided to move back to Texas, where most of my family and college friends lived. Texas was a place I thought of as home. And home was supposed to be safe and cuddly—more teddy bear, less actual animal with teeth. Only my welcome party didn’t get this memo. To say “Hello, we sure are glad to have you here,” they kicked in my door and went straight for what was, sadly, my jugular: my home computer. An alarm clock, iPods, the stereo, iPhone chargers. Some costume jewelry they must have thought was nice but actually wasn’t.
And a glass swan that was a ring holder I’d kept next to the bathroom sink since I was eight. That glass swan and I had logged a lot of miles together, but now we’d travel together no more.

There were options after the break-in, and I contemplated each in the days that ran into nights and slowly added up to weeks.

I could do nothing, stay put, and hope that lightning would not strike twice; a surprise side-benefit of this decision could be that I’d set the Guinness Book record for highest consecutive number of sleepless nights. There were plenty of apartments in safer neighborhoods that I could move to, but deep down that felt more like retreat than a choice.

Or I could stop thinking of the burglars as just petty thieves and view them as messengers. I’d moved home to put down roots and maybe, just maybe, it was time for me to start digging.

Instead of finding a good hairdresser and whining about no-good men—my routine for every city—I could think about what it meant to build a real home. For me, for better or worse, that meant having someone to share it with. And if it was going to take investing my 401(k) in surgical modifications to get the men in my zip code to notice me, then I was ready to go looking for another type of companion who would accept me as I am.

In the past, I’d resisted the commitment of a dog—I lived in cramped rentals and liked to travel on weekends. In other words, I wanted freedom in my space and schedule; a dog was not something I could walk away from just because a spontaneous happy hour was planned by friends, a Jet Blue special arrived in my inbox, or a great job opportunity was offered in a city where cost of living for one was so high you could barely afford to keep Pedigree in the pooch’s bowl.

No strings attached is great when you’re approaching a weekend in Miami, but not as much fun when you’re wondering why loose ends are always dangling in your direction.

The choices were simple: continue on the road I’d already been walking for a while, or choose another path. And so I went looking for a four-legged ball and chain.

The first night Isabella, the Rhodesian ridgeback I rescued from a shelter in East Texas, spent at my townhouse in Dallas was a quiet one. I came home after work to meet my parents, who had picked her up. I walked her around the block and fed her dinner. Every time she stood up I assumed she needed to go out but soon discovered that dogs are like people, sometimes they want to stretch their muscles and wander as they wish.

She and I have lived together for six months now. I still have frivolous indulgences, like too much time spent at the hairdresser and not enough at the soup kitchen, but I find myself much more settled. The address still isn’t permanent, but it’s good to know that the two of us are.

Slowly she and I have learned each other and our new way of life together. I may not live alone anymore, but I don’t feel my independence was taken from me. In my commitment to something outside myself I have found an entirely new kind of freedom, one that doesn’t require the ability to leave, just to love.

Anna Mitchael is the author of Just Don’t Call Me Ma’am, your soon-to-be favorite book that will be released in April 2010 by Seal Press. She chronicles her daily life in Texas (with a side of extra-spicy jalapeños, please) on annamitchael.com/happinessproject.