When did one crazy chance stop you from ruining your life?

Had a friend who asked if I wanted to move to California with him and his family.

I was 16 and thought it sounded fun.

I didn't know at the time, but he was actually rescuing me from my insane mother and a not so happy home life.

When you have stuff like this going on, sometimes it's hard to know that

it's happening until you become an adult and gain a perspective. I shudder to think what would

have happened to me if I'd stayed there. In 1996, my parents were deciding between two houses to

move into. They picked the new construction that resulted in being placed on shoddy soil and years of

lawsuits when we ultimately moved in 2001.

Anyway, the other house they could have picked, presumably on better soil, would have placed

my older sister at a well-known high school, beginning with C, in the exact same year

as an infamous massacre that took place there.

Two consecutive seizures from alcohol withdrawal

the day I checked into rehab without detoxing. I was told afterwards that it was 50-50 that

I survived that night. I'm currently just a couple of months shy of five years sober. I broke my lease

and moved out of a terrible apartment complex I was living in to move back home because I was broke.

Two weeks later, the whole complex burned to the ground from a crystal lab in another unit.

A few clarifications. The apartment was right outside of downtown Birmingham, Alabama.

I didn't have rent as insurance, I was a broke 20-year-old at the time,

so I wouldn't have got any kickback from it. I did end up getting my security deposit back,

which they said I had forfeit by breaking the lease, so that was nice. And you silly's,

that crystal lab wasn't mine. I picked mine up and brought mine to Florida with me where it

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