I’m Not A Bitch. Karma Did That, Not Me. He Deserved It.
But then I got more than I bargained for when Karma came looking for me
I’m not superstitious. I don’t believe in God either. Most things are explainable by science or coincidence, but there are other situations that are just too weird to pass for either. So, today I’m filing this post under Karma, and then asking you to decide where it should fit after that.
Friends don’t believe me. They said the events I speak about couldn’t have happened. They’re just too outrageous. Nevertheless, they are true — and now I’ll reveal them to you.
I dated someone quite a few years ago who believed in Karma. Sometimes, she spoke about it as though her life depended on it. “Life has its way of balancing itself out,” she always said. “Be kind and kindness will come your way.”
Last time I saw her, she was shy, almost a hermit-like creature. Her quiet, homebody lifestyle bubbled along nicely until her spouse ran off with their child’s nanny. That’s when she became white-hot and invoked Karma to strike him down. I heard the stories of his lying — the affair — some attempted poisoning — a divorce — and their division of assets. I felt sorry for the situation she’d found herself in. Just as I was about to side with her (and forgive her lame attempt to coat his toothbrush with insecticide), she admitted something to me that had me reassess my position. She said she manipulated the courts to get more money from him, and full custody of their daughter. She cackled like a witch when she said she was holding all the cards and could do whatever she liked to him. She had the police and the judicial system on her side. I couldn’t believe the level of deception she’d created, and the venom she spat at this guy. I switched my decision and felt sorry for the man and the daughter caught in her war. Where was the kind woman who believed in Karma? Where was, “Be kind…” and so on?
And then she swished back the curtains on the main window of her recently finished living room, as though she were a Queen presenting her Kingdom to a subject. “You like?”
The mountain I saw on the other side of it was most impressive. It stole the show. My eyes became transfixed on it. “Wow! Very few people get to have a mountain as a feature for their living room.”
“I know. It’s so cool, isn’t it? Do you know the name of that mountain?” She asked, grinning as though she’d conquered the territory outside the window all by herself.
“Sure, it’s Mount Lindesay,” I replied. “I’ve photographed it many times.”
I heard a loud gasp. The curtain snapped shut and the room went dark. She was silent and then began biting her nails. I asked about her reaction and, as it turned out, the mountain’s name was the same as her former husband!
Karma?
And that’s where friends lose support for my story. They tell me that it’s so unlikely, it couldn’t have happened. They say, number one, Lindesay wasn’t his real name and, number two, it’s hard to accept a woman not already knowing the name of a mountain that’s outside her own home. Why ask a stranger? She should know!
I get that. It’s a fair statement. I probably wouldn’t have believed it either, but I was there when it happened — and Lindesay isn’t an exclusive name. It’s rare, but not exclusive. A mountain and a former lover can share the same name, right? And they did.
Which brings me to issue number two. The unknown mountain.
There are good reasons why she didn’t know the mountain’s name. Her home was built in a hurry. She bought the vacant land without visiting it. She was busy bundling up her old life and baby girl a thousand kilometres away. Most of the home and land arrangements were done remotely, and under high emotion. An agent sent her photos and she was sold. She told an architect to draw up the house in a way that the main window would take advantage of the view. She filed for divorce while the home was being built. She spent her days between her parent’s home, lying to the police, visiting the courts, and then cheating every system to get his money. She used their child as leverage and then relished in the glory of her spoils. Identifying that mountain in the distance wasn’t a priority. Greed and retribution was.
Now do you believe?
Was it God’s Will? Karma? Coincidence?
Whatever it was, this is just the abridged version of the story. I wove the rest of it into my novel SEETHINGS. (Avail: Kindle, Kobo, IPAD, etc.)
Author: M.Forman
P.S. The above story has taken an interesting turn since I wrote this piece many years ago. (It gets even better.)
The woman recently contacted me out of the blue. After nearly two decades of silence, she calls. A major health scare has prompted her to make contact with past acquaintances. Cancer invaded her body. Surgery had taken place. I didn’t ask where the cancer was located, but she said it was life threatening. I heard all about the now grown-up daughter — who got married and moved away to be closer to her once estranged, father.
It turns out that this daughter (and her new husband) spend far more time with him (and that husband-stealing nanny) than her. She’s pissed. She’s pissed at everyone, men top the list, but she’s mostly pissed at her back-stabbing daughter.
She escaped that offensive window with the hideous feature on the other side of it, by moving. She now lives with a bunch of cats (Yes, true too), closer to the city. And then there’s one more peculiar thing to include in the story.
She informs me where the cancer was found — her vagina (Yes, true). Her girlie bits were mutilated in order to save her life — a tragedy… with Karma? It seems “Be kind and kindness will come your way” has become “Be nasty and nasty will come in place of it.”
This woman and I have had a long history that stretches all the way back to our teenage years. Three chances passed by us, and I’m thankful they did just that. As I mentioned earlier, this is just a short version of a much larger story. There’s more to our on-again-off-again thirty year relationship which went into the book. -M
Originally published at https://michaelformanevil.substack.com on November 21, 2021.