A ghost, a wallet, a pair of boobs, and the year I stopped pretending to be normal.

I have a secret I don't share often, because people hear it and think they know what it means.

Here it is: a ghost has been latched to me for 16 years.

She showed up after I had a near-death experience at 18, in a town that had a notorious mental asylum. At first I was terrified. I tried to exorcise myself. I sought religious counsel. Nothing worked.

But over time, I got to know her. She wasn't evil. She wasn't trying to hurt me. She protected me. She told me things. I stopped being afraid.

Now I consider myself married to this presence. In some traditions, they call it a "walk-in"—a spirit that enters at the cusp of adulthood and eventually takes over. I don't need you to believe that. I just need you to understand that this is how I experience my life.

For the past six years, one of the ways she shows up is by bringing people into my life—people I'm supposed to play a role in their journey.

The first time I really noticed it was 2020. I was helping start a food pantry at a church. One evening, on the accessibility ramp to the kitchen, there was a wallet next to the door. No money in it. But essential cards. An ID. A driver's license. Things someone would be in real pain to replace.

I found the person online and reached out.

That woman had become homeless two weeks earlier. She'd been assaulted. She had survived Electroshock therapy years before, which when not consensual, has been deemed by the United Nations as a form of torture.

We talked. We got to know each other. We said goodbye. I'd see her around town sometimes, having very public, very hard episodes. Hard drugs. Domestic violence with a series of men.

If you had told me then that we would live together years later, I would have thought you were absolutely mad.

But after the storm—the one that shook our region a year and a half ago—I took her to see FEMA. And then she gave me her boobs.

Let me explain.

She's a cancer survivor. She had a mastectomy, and then filler boobs after the procedure that never felt quite right. And I'm me—someone who would have loved to have boobs and much less body hair on my face and chest.

When my roommates left after the storm, they left behind a cat and many belongings. I was already caring for my dog, who had been hit by a car and euthanized at age three, before the storm. I was financially uncertain. Completely estranged from my Fox News family.

And then this woman—Emily—moved in with me. For a year, we supported each other. We built foundations in each other's lives.

This past week, she moved into her own place. Lady Gloria, a new building. I'm very proud of her. And I'm done with that year of my life.

At the same time, the spirit moved again.

I've known Mary and her kid for even longer. A few weeks ago, they were evicted from an extremely sketchy, illegal rental situation with a malignant landlord. They've been living in a car and hotels, undernourished, hiding from the sun.

I had a wonderful man lined up to move into the empty room in my house. He stepped back. He said my life was a constant set of new complications. He said he fought for his stability.

I respect his choice. But I don't think we have the same definition of stability.

Sometimes stability, as it's modeled to people, is what prison offers. Two hots and a cot. Quiet. Predictable. Alone.

I believe in building stability through interdependence. Other people are not the problem. We don't need to screw each other over to survive. There are games we can play where everyone wins.

Right now, Mary and her 13-year-old son are staying with me. Domestically, we are completely stable. Financially? Not so much.

I'm making wonderful moves toward financial independence—tech support, this blog, apple chips, Heartwarmers. I'm not stagnant. But right now, I have a single parent and a teenager in my living room who were recently evicted.

They are not the problem.

I love being able to provide a space where they don't have to constantly hide.

This is what my life is. I make plans. But my life is possessed. Possessed by an ethereal marriage that shows up in magical, inconvenient, beautiful ways.

I'm not asking you to believe in ghosts.

I'm asking you to believe that I believe. And that this belief has led me to a life that looks very different from the one I was supposed to have.

No complications. Just people. Just staying. Just a ghost who has never led me wrong.