The Human Tie-Down

A normal everyday story about moving to a new home.

Names have been changed to protect the guilty, the innocent, and those still deciding which category they belong in.

Reminiscing about Santa Barbara, where my living situation was what real estate agents would generously call "creative housing." I'd convinced nine clueless housemates to rent me their "above-ground basement" on Bath Street—a single window concrete bunker they considered uninhabitable but I recognized as my first opportunity for discount homeownership.

For the bargain price of $400 a month (highway robbery for a space condemned by building inspectors in three counties), I transformed what was essentially a fallout shelter into a bohemian paradise. While they were busy upstairs playing beer pong and failing their classes with remarkable consistency, I was downstairs installing a canopy bed made of "reclaimed materials" (sticks I found in the park after a storm) and decorating with "vintage furniture" (a velvet sofa someone had sensibly abandoned on the curb after what I hoped was just a wine spill).

My renovation involved patching crumbling walls, epoxying industrial floors, and immediately changing the locks—because nothing says "thank you for this opportunity" like ensuring your landlords can't access their own property. When my roommates finally descended to see my architectural masterpiece, complete with fairy lights strategically placed to hide the water damage, they tried renegotiating the price. "Sorry," I told them, waving the lease like a victory flag at the Olympics of poor decisions, "you've been out-adulted by someone whose bathroom is currently behind a beaded curtain in the garden."

Fast forward two years, and I was ready for a mature upgrade with my boyfriend and my best friend Rooster. My boyfriend at the time was, like all my romantic selections, a "project" – dark, mysterious, and deeply flawed in the way that makes parents immediately increase their life insurance. He was brilliant enough to debate philosophy until sunrise but couldn't remember to pay the electricity bill. My dating history read like a catalog of intelligent disasters – men who could quote Nietzsche while mixing their sixth drink of the afternoon.