How does an unmarried woman turn into a housewife? It’s quite simple: She invades another person’s family. Okay, so it wasn’t an invasion. It was more like squatting.

Let me explain. After graduation, if not for the kindness of a friend, I would be homeless. With no job and no real savings, I moved in with my friend Jessica and her 15-year-old son.

Shortly thereafter, my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and tons of nervous and unchanneled energy more or less turned me into June Cleaver on crack. Now I cook, I clean, I look for jobs until I can’t stand it anymore, and then I go back to cleaning – the cycle goes on and on.

It’s just like being married: my friend goes to work (school, in this case), the kid goes to school, I do the domestic thing, they come home, we eat, catch up on each other’s days, and at night. The only difference ... and maybe it’s not even that different ... is that we don’t have sex.

The thing that strikes me as odd is how much of a departure my new life is from life as I came to know it for the last five years, and how quickly I made the shift. I guess this is how those that survive do – by adapting as quickly as possible.

This recession is seriously cramping my style, while simultaneously delivering a crippling blow to my self-esteem.

But at least the house is clean.