Leave the Light On. Jennifer Storm

      When I caught Tina in her lie, I called my parents and told them my living environment was no longer a safe place for me and my recovery because my sponsor was using. My parents knew enough about the program of recovery to know that the most important thing is to avoid people, places, and things related to using. After talking, we determined it was time for me to get my own apartment. This was something my parents had wanted me to do from the start. To this point in my life, I had never been on my own.

      Before meeting my father, my stepmother was a fiercely independent woman. She had always provided for herself, and I knew she wanted me to experience that kind of freedom and security. My father was different. He always had been in a relationship, and up to that point, I had mirrored his actions. My parents had saved a good chunk from the insurance money left by my biological mother when she died three months before I went into rehab. Her death from breast cancer was one of the catalysts that got me into recovery. The pain of her loss was too much for me to bear, which helped me hit rock bottom quickly. My father and stepmother were smart about my inheritance when I got it after her death. Knowing that I was a mess and still using, they requested that I give them the money and allow them to dispense it to me as needed. For some reason I actually agreed to this, probably because I was such a mess, but also because I was making good enough money tending bar to feed my drug habit. So I didn’t push the issue with them as long as they paid my bills and rent. Thanks to them, I ended up with a couple of thousand dollars left over. I used the money to find a cute little one-bedroom efficiency set in the woods about a mile from the Pennsylvania State University campus.