maybe a tiger can change its stripes

Since Linda moved into her own apartment, I have been blissfully unengaged in her drama. If she called my cell...I ignored it. If she needed something, Rick was on point to get it.

Don't get me wrong, there have been some not-so-fun moments with her since she's been on her own. For one, her first month in her apartment she did not set foot outside other than to take her trash out to the dumpster. Knowing her tendencies, I'll call this a small victory in and of itself that she actually took the initiative to throw out her garbage on her own.

But with that meant I was receiving phone calls from her landlady worried about Linda's welfare because she wouldn't answer the door or return her phone calls. It also meant Linda only had the food I'd originally stocked in her pantry to get her started with the intent she'd go to the grocery store to get her perishables.

The holidays came and went without her meeting my parents, but we did package up some leftovers for her to enjoy. And I know Rick picked up some special requests like orange juice, bread and some other sundries. But all in all, she subsisted off Ramen noodles, pasta, etc.

So the weekend came where we knew we needed to get her out of her apartment so she could get groceries. The condition was that she would have to do the shopping and we would provide the transportation. I was no longer going to enable this unhealthy behavior. Coupled with her constant state of prescription medication withdrawal, she was quite worked up. Even just sitting in the car with her was nearly unbearable. The yelling and screaming, complaining which turned into full-blown tantrum. I asked Rick to quit engaging and told Linda that if she didn't knock it off, we would stop the car and turn around. Now I start hearing the echos of my parents as they threatened to stop the car on long road trips while us kids bickered in the backseats of our 12 passenger van.

Linda pulled herself together that day and managed to stock her apartment with groceries and long-depleted necessities.

So you can imagine my surprise when we stopped over to her apartment the other night to find her in a cheery mood. Over the course of the last two weeks, she has finally broken through the boundaries of her four-walled apartment, walking across the street to the General Store for supplies or down the street to the post office and ATM. She even said that she's making friends in her apartment complex. The landlady (god bless her) had been taking Linda to her doctor appointments and to the pharmacy to pick up her meds.

But what struck me the most was Linda's apartment. It was CLEAN. Mind you, she's now been there two full months. During that same amount of time while she was living with us in our townhouse, she'd gone back to her old hoarding habits. But this was new...her apartment was tidy, dare I say even organized. I knew things were looking up when I saw that she had her earrings neatly hung on a jewelry organizer. A far cry from the indiscriminate dumping of jewelry, pills, trash, cigarette butts and other unidentifiable things into her drawers.

I walked out of there on Friday night thinking maybe, just maybe the hell that I went through with her was worth it. Maybe this tiger is going to use this second chance to make a better life for herself. Of course, nothing is for sure, but for a moment I felt proud of her.