More About the Lady In White...

Yay! What is this, like four posts this month?! I'm on a roll, but there's a reason. It's because I'm finally free of the fear of all this scariness. Yeah, I know. I mean I'm still careful, don't get me wrong, but for the first time in a long time, I really feel protected and maybe I have a little extra sense of purpose.

So, I left off with unanswered questions. I know I talked about the night I tried to talk to "The Lady in White." Now, I know I change her name up, and there's a method to my madness, I promise. I don't want to give it a solid name. As I mentioned, I truly forgot the name that it chose to take, and I believe that's a form of protection for me. If you can't remember it, you can't call it, right? Anyway. I want to talk about the effect that it had on my life.

My family... Tough times, but life still happens

All kinds of craziness at that time

Right about the time that we first began to notice scary activity, we also had a lot of craziness going on. My sweet, honest Henry was being accused at work of things that he didn't do, which after the fact he was cleared of because they found the missing money. I was having more anxiety than I knew what to do with, and Henry wasn't working for about a month.

Just before then, I had been seriously considering going back to school. I took the entrance exam and got accepted. I was so excited! We live close to a university (MTSU) and all I needed to do was choose my classes and my schedule. I was thrilled. I even had the money to pay for the first semester. I would have only depended on Henry to cover a few books.

Just before everything came down, we got into a horrendous fight and he wound up yelling at me that he didn't want to pay for me to go to school. So, I determined that I would cover all costs myself and to hell with him. As most couples, though, we had settled into a grudging acceptance of the situation and I turned on my stubborn while he turned on his contrition. 

The same day that I was about to choose a schedule and make a payment, something told me to wait. It was like a voice in my head or my heart saying, "Hold on. Not yet." Now, I'm a big believer in trusting my gut. When something tells me not to or to do something, I listen. It's part of the reason that making plans is so weird for me. Because what if that intuition or my gut says don't go? Yes, yes, mostly anxiety I'm sure. But still...

Anyway, so I chose not to choose classes. And that same day, my husband called me and told me he was being suspended. He had failed a polygraph, but not just one... Three or four. There was money missing and he was the one on the route that day. It didn't make any sense at all. Everything was on camera, so we couldn't understand how they would even try to point the finger at him. Not only that, but he had just gotten a promotion with a decent raise. 

He came home and he cried. I didn't ask til much later if he had taken the money, I knew he hadn't. And thankfully, he wound up getting a new job, and as close to an apology as he could expect given the fact that it came out that he had been set up. But, the job wasn't what he wanted to be doing. It paid much less and it strained him both physically and emotionally. His pride had been hit really hard, and our relationship had been too. 

Henry took to staying up really late and playing upstairs on his X-Box. I hated that damn thing. I mean, I was struggling to make ends meet and carry him emotionally and it was taking a toll. We fought. Now, I have to explain here that Henry and I have always kind of bickered. It's born of two stubborn people I guess, but it works and we love one another. These fights were much, much different. They left me exhausted and wanting nothing more than to escape.

Then my dad had a stroke. Do I think it had to do with our situation? I don't know. I blamed it for a while. I even decided I wouldn't tell my dad anything anymore. Seriously unfair I know, but I couldn't have my bad luck affecting my dad's health. That's what I saw it as: bad luck. But then, it was bad luck that brought us to this house in the first place.

My girls... On a good day :)

So far down

I've been through really bad, really horrible stuff before. I've survived an extremely abusive relationship, I've struggled through divorcing him and being a single mom who didn't make much money. I'm like anyone, I've lived life. I've come out on top. When Henry and I got married, things were really really good. In fact, before we moved to Tennessee, things were really good. He had a great job, made a great living... I was a stay at home mom to our girls and we were really happy. 

Our move showed us what it was to fall from grace and it do so for a very long time. When Henry lost his job and became depressed, he would tell me about how he would regularly see the "Lady in White." She would be around all the time. I believe - although he's never said - that it was trying to offer him comfort. And really, what can you do if your husband is having an affair with a ghost? Now, I exaggerate, I'm sure. I don't think it was quite like that, but I think that it -she - offered him comfort where I was too beaten down to do it.

In all honesty, at that time I didn't really care. Too many things were going on and while we tried to maintain a sense of normal, life was anything but...

Shortly after the job loss and the stroke, our oldest started acting up. She was spending time with people who sold drugs, and she was experimenting with them herself. We tried to trust her judgment, we thought we were talking to parents when we weren't and, for a while, she was able to hide the worst from us.

We thought things got somewhat normal. My husband didn't love his job, but it was work and he was learning. He had gotten a couple raises and my work was picking up. Until the tremendous flood. His company had to shut down for a while, which meant that he didn't get paid for about a month. Then when he was finally asked to return to work, it was with a $2/hour pay cut.

The flood, before it finished raining

All this time, we knew there were things going on in the house. Mostly it was seeing things from the corner of your eye, or having things go missing. One time, my youngest daughter's iPod went missing and I finally told her to ask for it back. We had searched everywhere. We tore the couch apart, moved it to look underneath, moved furniture and even cleaned out closets. When she asked for it back it was out of frustration, but the next day I was straightening out the couch and right under the cushion was her iPod. It wasn't in a corner, or in a crevice. It was right under the cushion.

These things happened. A lot. Henry told me during this time that I would sit up, swing my legs over the bed and talk to someone. Then I would fall back asleep. Usually, it was after he soothed me back to sleep.

Strangely, I felt that the distance I felt from my husband was filled by the closeness I felt to whatever was in my home. We kept it together but fun was hard to come by and the idea of being in love was an obscure one at best.

Now that I look back, I can understand how what was in our home was eating away at our happiness. It was only by our sheer stubbornness that we made any progress at all, and mostly it was just surviving. I remember lashing out at God. I would stand in our kitchen sobbing, wondering why God would do this to us. Now, I know that it wasn't that God wasn't doing these things to us, it was more that we didn't know to look for the ugliness that was infecting our very lives. I used to think that our house was the only thing that loved us, but I was wrong. I just didn't know it. Things would improve, only to get bad again.

Each time the devastation would become worse. Eventually, we discovered our oldest was having serious problems with substance abuse, and we had to get her treatment. The emotional toll that the whole process took on us nearly broke us. Henry was tired, I was stretched to my limit emotionally, and our youngest was feeling the effects of a home in turmoil.

It seems more and more that people would see the "Lady in White" following me. It freaked me out, but then again, I guess I knew it was there. It felt like a cloud. It was heavy and hurt. I think during that time I aged quite a lot.

Okay, so I don't want things to get so long that you get bored. So... I'll pick it up tomorrow. Thank you all for reading. If nothing I hope that you're enjoying the retelling, as hard as it is to follow ;) Until next time, be well, and safe.