I'm Still A Suspect

Sometimes I wish for things and they really happen.

Sure, it happens to all of us. But sometimes it’s a bit uncanny.
That’s when I subscribe to karma.

There have been small instances, but some have been glaring. It has been some of the things that have hurt me most in my life where the outcome seemed just so suitable for the crime.

In high school, I dated a guy who constantly made fun of my hair and my teeth. Sure, it was the 80s and I was from Queens, so the hair was high with Aqua Net. He wanted his mother, a hairdresser who had her salon (and I use that term loosely) in the basement of their house, to "fix" my ’do. No thanks.

This very same guy used to point out the gap between my front two teeth and tell me that I should really get that fixed.

I dated him for way longer than I should have, but when I finally told him it was over, he cried to my mother and told her I was the one he wanted to love forever. He was 19.

Once it was over, I felt like I could breathe again. He was really controlling and used to forbid me from wearing skirts and going anywhere without him.

There were times that I wished ill will upon him, but it never happened…until many, many years later when he was in a terrible car accident and lost all of his teeth. He is now also, due to age and genetics I assume, pretty much completely bald.

Was this some type of divine intervention? Was it atonement from God to me? Or was it just an odd coincidence?

When my grandmother was just a kid, she was told she had to move from Brooklyn to Marlboro, New York, which is about 2 hours upstate, for the summer. She didn’t want to go, but her parents made her go to the farmhouse so she could pick apples and do whatever it is you do on a farm in the summer in the 30s.

I think it was about a week in when the entire farmhouse burned down. No one was hurt. And my grandma got to go back to Brooklyn.

There was a time that I did not get along with my father. At all. And I did wish horrible things upon him. About two years ago, he and I had a terrible fight, one of the worst ones, and we didn’t speak for weeks. I called him on Father’s Day because, well, it was Father’s Day and I thought it was a good time to break our silence. We made up the best we could over the phone and looked forward to seeing each other again.

A short time after that he crashed his motorcycle and could have died. He spent over a month in a hospital and I was there taking back every bad thing I ever wished upon the man who gave me life. I learned a lot from that.

I was, and I still maintain this stance, unjustly fired earlier this year. There were many whispers behind my back and at the final moment, they all hid like cowards behind an excuse that had no merit. There was controversy, sure. There was scandal, yes. After all, I did work in a den of sin filled with corrupt businessmen and backstabbing co-workers. Yes, there were some really great people there too, and I don’t want to lump them together with the scum that sucked the life out of any spirit of goodness that was there. Some people who were instrumental (or at the very least not vocal in my defense, which is an offense in my book) in my firing have recently found themselves on the wrong side of karma. One man broke his back and two others were fired.

I’m sure they will be fine, just as I am fine. Better off, even. Well, maybe not the guy with the broken back. But this is a man who once said to me that he didn’t like women like me because we have too much to say.

I have always been a big fan of justice.

When talking about this with someone, they said that "karma is a belief, I wonder if justice is the moral equivalent."

Take heed in what you wish for. Let karma put forth justice.