House Keys for Lemons

There is a saying I heard somewhere. I can’t remember where—maybe on an Instagram Reel? Either way, it goes, “You ask the Universe for a house and the Universe hands you a set of car keys.” In my case, I recently asked the Universe for a better career and the Universe gave me a mouse infestation and six days to move into a 540 square foot garden level apartment that my boyfriend is paying for because I am still only an adjunct professor. 

The Wednesday prior to the mousening, Kyle and I packed up our two dogs and left our little home north of Grand Rapids with Savannah, Georgia in the GPS. I slept five hours the night before because I was ripping with anxiety and heartburn, anticipating a weekend that didn’t seem like it would come at all. That is, until I was staring down the barrel of the days I spent so long longing for, that I got the familiar itch of anticipating the other shoe to drop. The National Museum of the Mighty 8th Air Force invited me in November of 2023 to come give a presentation/ speech on my Letters to Loretta Series at their conference room. Back in November of 2023, I had just turned 33, and Kyle and I were four months deep into living with his parents because the house we rented (that I chose) turned out to be untenable and we had no other choice but to relocate to a two acre plot of land, 35 minutes north of the city I so desperately wanted to remain entangled with. It was also his childhood home. 

This was my nightmare. 

I tried to break up with him. Not because I didn’t love him, but because I didn’t want to burden him. The house we had to leave was my choice, my fault, and I became overloaded with shame that bubbled up from within me where it had been trapped somewhere between 1998 and 2016. I couldn’t live with parents, let alone with someone else’s parents. I couldn't bear the thought of waking up to the sound of someone else’s mother cleaning the bathroom, making breakfast, and running errands. I couldn’t deal with a dad snoring in front of a television; I couldn’t face a family dynamic that hadn’t existed for me in almost 15 years. 

Spoiler alert, Kyle didn’t allow me to break up with him. He’s a gentle soul, but no one cuts through my bullshit quite like him. 

“We’re partners,” he said.

“Shut the fuck up,” I whined. What the hell was I even saying? I spent so much of my life alone that the moment someone came in to be partners and step on my hyper independence I became repulsed at the thought. I was so wound up by the time Kyle decided he wanted to be with me that, after three months, I realized I was the problem in the relationship. Then, six short months after that, standing in a musty kitchen trying to navigate the hellscape we moved into, I realized that I couldn’t handle failure in front of someone who’d seen me naked. He got his wish—we’re still together—and I had to kick and scream the whole time while some guy I matched with on Hinge perceived me.

I cried so much at first that my tear ducts actually swelled and I had trouble closing my eyes completely. I didn’t even know that could happen to a person. I also didn’t know I had that much to cry about. The situation sucked, but it was figured out expeditiously and we moved into his parents’ house with little to no warning, in little to no time, with next to no hassle. Who was crying so damn much? I speculated that, on a metaphysical level—childhood trauma level—it was old tears that I wasn’t allowed to shed for the fear of being punished. I wasn’t permitted to experience failure and to feel that failure either, that it kind of just compounded over and over until, 10 to 15 years later, I moved into a house with my first serious relationship and that house is full of excrement and black mold. 

Was I… the house? Not everything has to be a metaphor. But a poop-filled house? 

It was so hard to be gentle with myself during those months. The invitation from the Museum of the Mighty 8th Air Force felt like a promising beacon of Gondor that I could look to in moments of absolute despair and trust that I was living on the second floor of my in-laws’ house for some good reason. Honestly, the reason had come in August of 2023, when I was dropped out of nowhere by my long-term copywriting client and a third of my income went out the window. If we had stayed in the poop-house, we wouldn’t have been able to afford it. 

When life gives you lemons…

When you ask the Universe for a safe home, it dumps you on the Welcome mat of someone else’s parents—and they don’t even lock the doors! That’s right, no keys. I wasn’t ready for keys. The Universe said, “You can’t handle the keys!” (Cue Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.)  

From July of 2023 to January 29, 2025, my life changed in more ways than one. In August, I killed a deer on a desolate Iowa highway with Jim V. Hart, the screenwriter of the likes of Bramm Stoker’s Dracula, August Rush, and Hook in the front seat of my car, landing me an unwilling 28-day stay in the corn state. But that’s a whole other story.

The more I released my childhood-related issues—and the more I allowed myself to be humbled by Kyle—the more things opened up for me. One day, I just stopped crying all together. 

“I’m here for you, and I’ll listen to you every single time—but you kind of keep crying over the exact same thing, every single week.” 

When I tell you, dear reader, I shut off. Nothing changes if nothing changes, though, right? Never in my life have I been karate chopped to the ego so lovingly and so effectively by another human being. Well, twice in my life. The first was when my college mentor/ professor/ advisor, Dr. Jadwiga Smith invited me to her home for lunch. 

“You know, when I first met you, you were very, very prickly. Like a cactus. All over.” Imagine this in a thick Eastern European accent. She had sat across from me in the reading room of her home and just served me brunch. 

Then, there was my childhood friend’s grandmother, Catharine Stimpson—AKA Dodie—AKA Dean Emerita of New York University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of English, Professor of English, Literary Law, Feminist Scholar, and someone who also humbled me all the way down one afternoon. I mentioned before that I’m hyper-independent, but I wouldn’t consider myself overly proud. If someone I respect is giving me criticism, I happily shut up and take it. Dodie and I met for lunch outside of the Whitney Museum in October of 2016. I took the train to Penn Station and then walked to the Meatpacking District. It was abnormally hot that day and I was not appropriately dressed. Dodie suggested we eat outside and I, of course, agreed. She ordered for me—because she always did and I loved that—and we got to talking about a “book” I wrote. I say “book” because of what Dodie said to me that afternoon.

“I read it all, and it was… honestly… a train wreck. So, so much happening. Do you want to be a writer, Katie, or do you just want to be someone who writes things down?” 

Boom, kill shot. 

I feel like, on a more intimate level, Kyle asked me a very similar question. He didn’t outright say it, but I gathered a message. And he was right. Why was I spending all of my downtime crying my eyes out instead of realizing this was the first time in over a decade where I didn’t have to pay rent and I could focus on myself? It didn’t come without its own immediate struggles, mainly financial, but I made a decision in November of 2023—not an impulsive decision either—more than years in the making. I applied for, and became, a professor. 

Did I get the house keys? Not outright. But I got the lemons.