Bad things happen to “good people” (again, I don’t really know if that truly exists without nuance, but for simplicity sake, I’m gonna keep going) all the time – we’ve seen it over and over and over with natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and more.
We know as a fact that people get pain they don’t deserve…
And karma doesn’t always hurt the “bad” people either. Donald Trump is President of the United States. Alex Jones is harming families who lost their kids, and he still has a giant platform and a bunch of money. Bill Cosby still has a shelf of Emmys. Over, and over, and over again we see karma is not giving the justice we expect…
And I feel weird about even wishing for someone to “get their karma” or whatever. I feel like I am almost always the first person to stand up and say, “Are we being too mean [to Lance Armstrong, Rachel Dolezal, etc.]
I feel like I’m always yelling about compassion and not over-doing the hurt to someone’s life, and forgiveness, etc.
And yet, I will admit, that it bothers me a bit that my rapist has suffered no consequences. He bragged and laughed to me about what he did to me.
I left school, and he got to continue. I’ve had problems with friendships and relationships of all types, but he’s just out there living his best life (as far as I know). He has suffered no consequences – not professional, not personal, not financial, not even just internal (again, as far as I can tell) of seeming to feel any guilt or remorse. I have suffered a lot, and he seems to have suffered nothing at all.
And it’s scary because when someone can so brazenly assault more than one woman and nothing happens, it makes me afraid he will do it again. And it just kinda sucks.
And it’s this very weird mash-up feeling at my disappointment that he has suffered no consequences (because even if I’m not pulling for his life to be ruined or anything, bad actions should probably have some consequences?), plus this weird guilty feeling for wanting someone to be punished for something…. There’s a part of me that feels gross about the fact that I don’t feel happy if I happen to see him happy (e.g. off something someone else has posted, because even blocking him everywhere doesn’t seem to mean that I can avoid updates on his life completely).
I feel like sometimes, in life, when you’re wronged in some way, people say things along the lines of, “Don’t even worry, karma will get to them.” But I think sometimes we really have to know… “Still don’t worry about them – live your own life. But karma really might ‘get to them’ or even come close to equalizing things in any way.”
There were probably women who were victims of Bill Cosby who died before it came out that he’s the serial rapist that he is. And he still isn’t in jail. And he may never go to jail. So, even the women who are alive still may never see justice. But most likely, there are women who died only seeing him as a beloved man.
And that’s pretty devastating.
*sigh* So, I don’t think I have anything earth-shattering to say in this post, but that’s just what I was thinking today – that this idea that karma always has your back doesn’t really seem to be true to me.
[This is from the sexual assault series.]
Yeah, that’s true–relying on God or Karma or The Fates for justice is awfully unsatisfying and, at least in the near term, terribly unreliable.
I suppose the one thing we can say with reasonable certainty is that if in the future someone else does something similarly horrible to you, you’d go straight to the police and that next person would get nailed. Perhaps you’ll be in a position to help a friend sometime down the road Similarly, if what that guy did becomes a habit, at some point he’s going to hit a woman who has been through it–or has learned from your blog or something similar–and off to jail he goes.
So perhaps there will be some sort of karma after all–so long as you think about it in terms of groups rather than individuals.
Yes, I would say I would be much better prepared if something happened to me again. I still don’t know if that would necessarily help because rapists get off all the time based off of various technicalities. I mean, I’ve seen cases there there is obvious physical evidence and even still it gets argued away as a “woman who liked it rough” or “should’ve done more.” So, I mean, hopefully nothing like this ever happens to me again. But if it does, then yes, I think I will do better. Whether the system would do better to help me? Who knows. (And again, hopefully I never have to find out.)
Also, yes, the guy has done it to at least one other woman. (But judging by everything he used to say, I got the sense he did it to at least two other women… But I don’t wanna go too far down a rabbit hole here. He explicitly told me about one more – even if I don’t read between any lines. So, I would not be surprised if he does it again. It does seem to be a pattern with him. Whether he ever gets any punishment whatsoever, who knows…
Yeah, we can hope for kind of eventual karma in general, but I think part of the reason I gave Cosby and Trump as examples are that they serially hurt other people, and neither of them really seem to be going down for it… Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But even in a group dynamic, I don’t see karma always necessarily helping… But I like that you keep hope! 🙂
You gotta have hope.
And yes, sorry I forgot to say it above, but may all your “how to handle sexual assault” wisdom be completely irrelevant going forward!
I mean, I think it went without saying 😉 (Even though for some reason I said it anyway hahaha. The point is, you’re totally fine!)