This is not my beautiful house.

I was elbow-deep in the more painful days of my Master’s degree–exhausted, broken, unwashed–when I decided that the only remedy to my suffering was to get a nose ring.  No longer would I be an insecure and lonely bag of slop, caving to the weight of books and the whims of my mentors and chronically on the verge of tears; no.  I, ladies and gentlemen, would be the Chick With The Nose Ring.  Sure, she’s alone, sitting off by herself, her fingers quietly playing with her scarf as she reads her novel for next Thursday’s book club.  But she’s not lonely.  She’s chosen to be by herself; she has enough confidence in the world and her role in it that she can steal away for an hour and know that they’re all outside, waiting for her.

My nose ring would be my battle scar, my homing signal, my stand.  I was a miserable 23-year-old thinking brilliant thoughts with no one to share them with, and I’d have been damned if that little piece of stainless steel wasn’t going to turn it all around for me.

My credit card was charged $35 by an apathetic tattooed hand.  I lay my head back, squeezed my eyes shut, and in a quick bloom of pain, was…The Chick With The Nose Ring.  I wore it like a medal.  I stomped on its chest with heels.  I lifted myself from my sorry reality and strutted through the streets, ripe, sexy, powerful.  I was that Chick, coasting along on my glory, until one day…I wasn’t anymore.   I was just me.  With a nose ring.  Lonely.  With one more debunked adult myth to accept.

I’ve since finished the degree, done laundry, and gotten myself a boyfriend.  I completely forget about the little silver stud in my nostril until my three-year-old niece starts to play with it.

***

WE WERE TOLD last month that our landlord was selling our house, and that though we are protected through next September, we have to accept that we might have to move.  We love our apartment, so the prospect of repacking the last of the boxes that we’d just sent out with the trash has led us to entertain some fairly hare-brained schemes.  Specifically, I took stock my savings, my future earnings, and all the questions marks looming down the pike, and found myself thinking, well, why not just buy it yourself?  Buyer’s market; everyone’s renting.  My bosses natter on endlessly about “building equity.”  Why the hell not?

Except that an idea like this starts you levitating.  The only grounding force was the expectation that everyone was going to talk me out of this, as I interviewed them one by one with the opener: “So, I’m thinking of doing something crazy!”  Yet one by one I was assured by trusted authority figures, carefully measuring their words, almost shocked by the logic of it, that it wasn’t a bad idea at all.

Whoa, wait, hang on a sec there, I thought.  Look at you.  You’re not The Girl With The Mortgage.  That Girl knows her credit score.  She knows roofers.  She knows where she’ll be in five years.  She’s got her Realtor in her contacts, and doesn’t apologize all the damn time for wasting a broker’s time with her indecisiveness.  You seriously think that can be you?

Two days later, Dad came to town to suss out the house and Mom was sending me googled research on condoizing Somerville properties.  Five days later, I was sitting in a Real Estate office opposite a slightly manic broker and his cell phone–my own broker and his cell phone, all of a sudden–learning about offers, sellers, FHA loans, dirty Somerville realty rivalries, and how much of a “gift” I really want to give my landlords, because no way is that place worth 680, 650 maybe, but then you’re just paying for the landscaping on their new house, you know what I mean?  He leaned back in his chair, ran his hand over his spiked hair, and put me on the phone with a mortgage specialist.

Several pay stubs, backdated tax returns, down payment figures, and conservative estimates later, she left me a voicemail.

“Hi!  So right now, I’m looking at selling you a $590,000 mortgage.  Your salary is a little tighter than we’d like, but with your credit score and…you said you could borrow a few thousand from your mom to make a nice, even down payment?  I see no reason why we can’t approve you today.”

***

THE HOUSE WAS ultimately sold before I could get the paperwork together.  Looking back, I never entirely wrapped my mind around the size of the idea, of what I would or could have been in for.  But the logistics of it just struck me as so, stupidly, easy.  Half a million dollars, and all I had to do was ask.  For a few, fleeting hours, I was The Girl With The Mortgage, and just me, both.