The High Cost of Living

The things I believe in are strange. I know that. But as bizarre as they may seem to those of you reading, everything in my belief system has grown organically out of circumstance. I've never been religious, per se, not in the traditional sense, even though Betsy tried her god damnedest to convert me, but the combination of various different things, culled from disparate sources, is more or less the religion that I follow. We've already looked at the Wheel of Destiny, which has proven itself to me beyond a shadow of a doubt with how the Jen/Rugers angle has played out so far, and that is a part of it. The Wheel acts as a function of the Larger Plan, which itself is a part of the Greater Purpose. What my ultimate greater purpose is .... I don't know. I will find out.

What I want to talk about this time is the Nice Lady. As I understand her, she also serves the Greater Purpose ... as some sort of guardian angel. I believe that she has saved my life at least half a dozen times, if not more, keeping me around so that I can fulfill my destiny, whatever it is. If that doesn't sound crazy enough, the concept of the Nice Lady begins with a ghost story.

When I was really little we lived in Westfield, Massachusetts. We weren't there very long, and I barely remember it at all. But this ghost story comes from that house. I wouldn't necessarily give any old ghost story so much credence, but it comes from my dad, who is about the last person you'd ever expect to hear a ghost story from. He might not be certain that this is in fact a ghost story, but any alternate theories I've heard, like an intruder in the house that evaded detection on the way in and out, stretch credulity more than a tad. I'm calling it a ghost story and sticking to it.

I was upstairs sleeping in my bed. Since we were living in Westfield I couldn't have been more than three years old, and maybe I was even younger than that. I'm not sure. I have no recollection of this episode whatsoever. My dad was downstairs reading the paper or something. My mom wasn't home and I don't think Colleen was around yet, or if so, she was just a baby. But to summarize, just me and my dad were home. Dad then heard footsteps going up the stairs. Thinking mom was home from the grocery store, he went out to the kitchen to see if he could help carry in some bags. The car, however, was not in the driveway. It wasn't mom. Then he shot upstairs after the footsteps.

I was awake. Wide awake and sitting up, he says. I asked him, very clearly, "When is the Nice Lady coming back?" So he asked if I meant my mother, and I said that I didn't. He verified that a couple of times. Nope, not mom. The Nice Lady. I believe he even tried some alternates, like some of my aunts and such, in case I was thinking of somebody else or had been dreaming or whatever. Nope. I insisted that the Nice Lady had just been there. My dad, feeling a little unsettled now, searched the entire house for any sign of anyone -- anyone who might be a Nice Lady or who might have been walking up the stairs only a minute ago. This included a search of a deep walk-in closet located within the room I'd been sleeping in. And he describes going in there, with a whole mess of clothes hanging, and having to look behind them all in case some crazy woman was hiding in there. He didn't find anyone.

So there's always been this ghost story of the Nice Lady, but for a long time that's all it was: just a story. I never connected it to any other thing, even after I had my first car accident, which should have really fucked me up .... but didn't. The Nice Lady didn't take on the pseudo-religious implications, and become the guardian angel of my ultimate destiny, until about three years ago. And then an issue of a comic book put it all together for me, and the epiphany hit me like a runaway freight train.

The comic is Sandman #20, "Facade", written by Neil Gaiman. He's an author of some note. He's written some excellent novels, which are now starting to be adapted into movies (like Stardust), and his run on Sandman is considered by most knowledgeable comic fans as one of the greatest runs ever, period, end of story. I'm not hoping to convince anyone to go out and read this particular issue or anything, because I know how that'll go, but I think it's significant that the same trade paperback that connected the Nice Lady for me also has the issue of Sandman that gave me Calliope (#17).

Anyway, to make a long story short, there's a character in the story with a problem, and she's extremely depressed. She's also, due to her super powers, functionally immortal, and she just doesn't want to live anymore. And she's visited by Death of the Endless, who talks to her about her problem and then helps her solve it. And in that story I saw my Nice Lady represented. Now, before this point I never pictured the Nice Lady looking like that particular comic book character, but I do now ... even if my interpretation of her role in my life isn't exactly representational of her role in that comic book. It's complicated.

Before that epiphany, however, I'd been aware that there were several instances where something or other happened through which I should have been seriously injured or died, but wasn't and didn't. I've always thought that something aside from the natural world reached down and saved me from my first car accident, in which I slammed sideways into a telephone pole at a high rate of speed, and woke up thirty feet away from the car with only a scratch on my forehead. It should have been much worse. My second car accident was a pretty rough affair, too, out of which I only got a minor concussion. There are also my several drinking and driving adventures from 1998, which I survived completely unscathed. A few other times during that same summer I did incredibly foolish things and nothing happened, including one time in Springfield I could have been shot dead. And a few things I won't mention here at all, and probably never will, but were a product of severe depression. Either I'm a cat and I have nine lives (at least) .... or the Nice Lady is watching out for me, and she's saved my life numerous times so that I can go on to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do.

I know which one I believe.