On February 1, 2011, I moved into my first apartment. It was on the second floor of an old Victorian, it was at College and Bathurst, and – aside from knowing exactly what it sounded like when the guy who lived above me peed – it was pretty okay.

Then, on April 1, 2012, I moved back home.

Too late into my-own-apartment life, I realized I’d dug myself into freakish amounts of debt. Within a few months, the only “food” I could afford was canned and/or in a box, I was getting sick from eating only microwavable carbohydrates, and I kept my heat turned off because it “cost extra” (compared to the booze I made sure to buy). By Christmas, I knew I was in way over my head, but rather than admit I’d made a huge mistake, I kept tapping into my lines of credit and my credit cards, convincing myself “money comes” if I kept repeating that mantra.

It did not. (Or maybe it did, and I just bought more wine with it.) So after I gave my landlords notice one night in February, I lay in bed drinking, taking cold meds that made me sleepy, and crying a gross, coughing, horrible cry of defeat. (You know the one – you’ve done it too.) I didn’t want to acknowledge facts. As far as I was concerned, by admitting I needed my “mommy and daddy,” I was rejecting independence and doing adulthood wrong. I was a failure. I’d let everybody down. I was a poor excuse for a grown-ass woman, and my life was ruined, maybe forever. Probably forever. Who knows! (Gulp.)

Well now you do: it was fine. So fine that I’d hate to think of what would’ve happened if I hadn’t made the long haul back to Cambridge, considering it took me over five months after moving home to get my mental health game on track via therapy and medication, then seven months after that to quit drinking. I’d been a Monet: from afar, my life on my own looked pretty damn good, but up close it was a big ‘ol mess.

Our lives are all messy, so I won’t pretend that mine’s totally tidy now since that’s gross and also untrue. Evidently, years of manic shopping and racking up tens of thousands of dollars in debt does not make for a “now I own my own house!” story. In truth, I’m only now – after two years concentrating on fixing the damage – at a point where I can afford things and pay bills. Which seems like a really lovely story about how living at home is pretty all right.

And it is, but not for those reasons. My parents didn’t have money to give me to bail me out of my own undoing (and honestly, thank goodness – I don’t want to think about how quickly I would’ve spent it), but they did offer me space. They offered me a safe place to live, they offered moral support when I realized my high-highs and low-lows weren’t something everybody else experienced, and they had my back when I realized I had a drinking problem. Which is also the makings of a really lovely family story. But this isn’t about that, either.

Earlier this year, my Dad went to the doctor because he’d been having chest pains and it turns out – gasp of surprise – that they signalled a problem. After a week of testing and an angiogram in May, results revealed that his main artery – an artery nicknamed “the widow maker,” because of course – was 99% blocked. That’s some real shit. Also real is the wait for treatment: while I will sing the praises of universal health care louder than Celine Dion can even dream, it’s a buzzkill for an appointment that was scheduled for July to be pushed to September. (But on the flipside, it’s free. So I’ll shut up.) But now we wait, wondering if he’ll get a stint (which is serious but common), or a bypass (which is president of the Not Fucking Around Committee), and watching nervously when he cuts the lawn or falls asleep. This is why I’m okay living at home right now.

I’m not going to say I don’t want my own space and my own apartment or Meg Ryan’s place in You’ve Got Mail (why not), but there’s nothing like a parental health scare to make you feel less shitty about not having the money you need to fly the coop right this minute. It may annoy me that I might not to be able to work in complete silence or that when I’m off to Toronto (which is almost every day) I’m asked when I’ll be home or told to be careful or who I’m seeing (“You don’t know them!”). But ultimately, right now, being close by in case I’m needed, or even around just to have a coffee and get to know my parents like actual people isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened.

Does it suck that I had to move home? Obviously. Do I wish I hadn’t fucked shit up? Of course. Would I rather have any other reason than my Dad’s heart to feel better about being where I am? Duh. But through these last two years and the life lessons they brought (always with the life lessons), I’ve finally been able to admit that it could be worse: I could have had nowhere to go, I could’ve had parents who didn’t give a shit about helping me get better, or I could be too far (geographically, emotionally) now to be there for my Dad. Even if, half the time, we’re two ships passing in the night, talking about how much we like Drake. (What can I say? We keep it simple.)

It’s good to be home.