One day before the wedding, my fiancé laid a neat stack of documents on my kitchen table and said, ‘Add my name to your apartment, or there won’t be a wedding.’ For a second, I thought it had to be some awful, badly timed joke. Then I looked at his face and understood he had not spent the past few months preparing to become my husband. He had been preparing a move. So I let him believe I was willing to listen, smiled just enough to keep him comfortable, and waited for the moment when every plan he had hidden would finally come into the light.

But nothing ever felt secure. Money was always a door that might not stay shut. So I became the kind of person who built her life in small, controlled steps.

I worked through college. Three part-time jobs at one point. I answered phones in the admissions office, waited tables on weekends, and did design gigs for campus groups that paid badly and wanted miracles.

I ate a truly irresponsible amount of instant noodles. I wore the same black coat for six winters. I said no to spring trips and birthdays out and concerts and all the ordinary, harmless ways people in their twenties spend money because I had fixed one private goal in my head and I did not let it go.

I wanted my own place. Not because I was particularly domestic. Not because I dreamed of gallery walls and throw pillows and Sunday mornings making pancakes.