Karma Isn’t Revenge

Artwork: MissyMooArt

Short Story: MissyMooShortStory

A short story about what we do with our energy

Sarah was having an argument in the shower.

Not with anyone who was actually there, obviously. It was just Sarah, the hot water, and a bottle of shampoo that promised radiance and had so far delivered nothing of the sort. But in her head the argument was in full swing, and she was winning it.

And another thing, Madaline…

She had the perfect words this time. Calm, clever, cutting. The kind of words that would make Madaline stop, go pale, and finally understand exactly what she’d done.

The water ran cold before she’d finished. She stood there dripping, still halfway through a sentence to a woman who was three miles away, probably eating a biscuit and not thinking about Sarah at all.

That was the thing that got her most. Sarah was giving this everything she had, and Madaline wasn’t giving it a second thought.

They had been friends for eleven years.

Sarah had been there for all of it. The divorce. The redundancy. The horrible year with Madaline’s mum. She’d sat on the end of Madaline’s sofa at two in the morning with a box of tissues and a bottle of wine, saying you’ll get through this, love more times than she could count. She’d picked up the phone whenever it rang, cancelled her own plans without being asked, and defended Madaline when other people rolled their eyes. She’s been through a lot. You don’t know her like I do.

And in return, Sarah had trusted her. She’d told Madaline the things she didn’t tell anyone else. The wobbles in her marriage. Her worries about her son. The dark few months after her dad died, when she could barely get out of bed.

Private things. Tender things. The things you only hand to someone you think will hold them carefully.

She found out in the queue at the café, of all places.

Someone she barely knew put a hand on her arm and tilted her head in that way people do. “I’m so sorry about everything you’re going through,” the woman said. “Madaline told us. She’s really worried about you.”

Sarah stood there holding a flat white she suddenly didn’t want, and felt the floor shift under her feet.

Over the following weeks the rest trickled out, bit by bit, the way these things always do. Madaline hadn’t just shared Sarah’s private business. She’d rearranged it. Polished it. Turned it into a story where Madaline was the patient, long-suffering friend, and Sarah was the difficult one. Too much. Too needy. Hard work.

The group chat went quiet. A couple of invitations dried up. People who had always been warm were suddenly just polite.

And Madaline? She carried on as if nothing had happened. No phone call. No explanation.

No apology.

“Karma will sort her out,” her sister said one Sunday over roast chicken, jabbing a roast potato for emphasis. “People like that always get what’s coming to them. You just wait.”

And Sarah nodded, because she had always believed that too. You hurt someone, it comes back to you. The universe keeps score.

So she waited.

And if she was honest (really honest, the kind of honest you only are with yourself at 3am), she didn’t just wait. She hoped. She lay in the dark and imagined it. Madaline’s friends finally seeing through her. Madaline being gossiped about for once. Madaline sitting alone in a café queue with that same sick feeling in her stomach.

She imagined it in detail. She replayed it like a favourite film.

She told herself it was karma. The universe putting things right.

But deep down, underneath the nice spiritual word, she knew what it really was.

It was revenge. Revenge wearing a floaty kaftan and a crystal necklace, but revenge all the same. She wasn’t waiting for justice. She was waiting for Madaline to hurt as much as she did. She’d just handed the job to the universe so she didn’t have to feel bad about wanting it.

Meanwhile, life went on around her, and Sarah barely noticed it.

She carried Madaline round the supermarket, stabbing at the self-checkout. She carried her up the hill every morning while walking the dog, composing long imaginary replies as the dog snuffled happily in the hedges, blissfully unaware that his owner was mid-speech to a courtroom that didn’t exist.

She carried her into work, into dinner with her husband, into the bath that was supposed to be relaxing. She carried her to bed, where at 3am the whole thing sat on her chest like a cat that wouldn’t move.

Why did she do it?

How can she not see what she’s done?

Why hasn’t she apologised?

When is it going to come back on her?

Round and round, like a washing machine stuck on the spin cycle.

And while she waited, Madaline posted photos of a lovely weekend in the Lakes. Sarah stood in her kitchen scrolling through them with her jaw clenched so tight it made her teeth ache.

If karma was on its way, it was taking the scenic route.

The day things began to change, it was raining.

Not dramatic rain. Just the grey, drizzly, can’t-be-bothered kind that gets into your collar. Sarah was halfway up the hill with the dog, deep in yet another imaginary argument, when she stopped at the bench by the old oak tree and sat down, wet bum and all.

She was exhausted. Not from the walk. From the carrying.

And sitting there, for some reason, she started to count.

Twenty minutes in the shower most mornings, arguing. The whole dog walk, every day. An hour, at least, lying awake at night. All the little moments in between: at the traffic lights, in the queue at the post office, halfway through a conversation with her own son while nodding along and not hearing a word.

Two, maybe three hours a day. For months.

She did the sums on her fingers and felt slightly sick. Hundreds of hours. Hundreds of hours of her one precious life, poured into a woman who had shown her exactly how little she cared.

And it wasn’t just time. It was energy. The deep kind. Soul energy. The same energy she used to love with, create with, laugh with, look after the people who mattered to her with. She’d been emptying it, day after day, into a bottomless hole with Madaline’s name on it.

No wonder she felt so tired. No wonder she hadn’t picked up her sketchbook in months, or rung her old friend from college, or sung along to the radio in the car. There was nothing left over. She’d spent it all on bad thoughts about somebody else.

And Madaline hadn’t felt a single one of them.

She sat and listened to the rain pattering on the leaves above her. She felt the cold damp of the bench seeping through her leggings. The dog leaned his warm, heavy weight against her shin, and she put her hand on his head and felt the soft fur between his ears.

For a moment, just a moment, she stopped trying to fix it.

She stopped trying to work out why Madaline had done it. She stopped wishing her harm. She stopped trying to climb out of the horrible, heavy feeling in her chest.

She just let it be there.

I’m hurt, she thought. I’m angry. I feel humiliated. I feel stupid for trusting her. And that’s allowed. I’m human.

Something strange happened then. The feelings didn’t vanish, but they stopped fighting her. Like a child who finally stops screaming once someone picks it up and holds it.

What had happened was what had happened. Madaline had broken her trust. That part was real, and it was painful, and it was done. But the thing that had drained her for months wasn’t really the betrayal itself.

It was the fight with it. Every she shouldn’t have. Every how dare she. Every she’ll get what’s coming. Every night spent insisting the past should have been different, when it simply wasn’t.

She’d been fighting reality, and reality had been winning every single time.

On the way back down the hill, Sarah thought about karma again. Properly, this time.

Maybe karma was never meant to be a cosmic revenge service. Maybe it was never about the universe punishing the people who hurt us while we sit on the sidelines keeping score.

Maybe karma was simply about action. Her action. What she chose. What she said. What she repeated. What she fed with her attention. Because whatever she fed with her attention was growing. And for months, the thing she’d been feeding was bitterness.

That was her karma. Not Madaline’s. Hers. She’d been planting resentment every single day, and she was the one living in the garden it grew.

And perhaps the only question that actually mattered was this:

What am I going to do differently next?

Not Madaline.

Her.

The message arrived three weeks later.

Sarah was stirring a pan of soup when her phone lit up on the worktop. Madaline. Her stomach dropped straight through the kitchen floor.

Hi. I think we need to talk. I know things have been awkward but you have really upset some people and I think you owe everyone an explanation. I’ve always been there for you. x

Sarah read it three times. Then she felt the old heat rise up her neck and into her face.

The old Sarah knew exactly what to do. She’d reply straight away, with a long, careful, heartfelt message. She’d explain. She’d correct every twisted detail. She’d lay out eleven years of evidence. She’d pour another evening of herself down the same old hole.

Her thumbs were already moving.

Then she stopped.

She stood very still in the steamy kitchen, with the soup bubbling and the radio murmuring in the background, and she noticed herself. Halfway through an old reaction, like catching yourself reaching for a biscuit you didn’t even want.

This is going to cost me, she thought. My whole evening. Probably my whole week. And I don’t want to spend it here any more.

She deleted the words, one letter at a time.

She put the phone face down on the worktop.

And she went back to stirring the soup.

It wasn’t easy. For days, the unanswered message sat in her phone like a stone in her shoe. Part of her itched to explain herself, to defend herself, to prove she was a good person.

But every time the old thoughts started up, Sarah tried something new. She noticed them, the way you’d notice a car alarm going off in another street. Oh. There it goes again. And then she asked herself a simple question:

Where would I rather put this energy?

Sometimes the answer was the dog, who got longer walks with a mistress who was actually looking at the view.

Sometimes it was her son, who got a mum who listened properly for once. Sometimes it was a phone call to her old college friend, which lasted two hours and ended with both of them crying with laughter.

And one Saturday morning, the answer was the sketchbook at the back of the drawer. She sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a stick of charcoal, and drew the oak tree from the hill, rain and all. It wasn’t perfect. It didn’t need to be. It was the first thing she’d made in months, and it felt like breathing out.

That was where her energy had been meant to go all along.

Some people would think she was being cold. Some people would believe the twisted story. Madaline would probably tell everyone that Sarah had ignored her, and look hurt, and get lots of sympathy.

Let her.

That was the hardest bit, and the most freeing. Letting people have their reaction. Letting them misunderstand her. Letting them think she’d changed.

Maybe she had.

Peace didn’t mean being passive. Compassion didn’t mean letting someone hurt her again and again. Understanding why Madaline might behave like that (her insecurities, her need to be the centre of the story) didn’t mean Sarah had to put up with it.

And forgiveness, she discovered, didn’t mean giving someone continued access to her.

One evening, quite unexpectedly, she realised she no longer wished Madaline any harm. She didn’t wish her anything at all, really. The anger had simply burned itself out, like a fire nobody was feeding any more.

She forgave her. Not for Madaline’s sake. For her own.

She just didn’t go back.

It’s a Tuesday evening now, and Sarah is sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of tea and her sketchbook. One cup. Just hers.

She can’t control what arrives at her door. Other people’s moods, their choices, their gossip, their chaos. That’s never been hers to control.

But she can decide whether to open the door and invite it in for tea.

These days, mostly, she doesn’t.

She thinks about all those hundreds of hours now, and she doesn’t feel angry about them any more. She sees them as a lesson. Every one of us only has so much energy in a day. So much love, so much attention, so much life. We can spend it wishing bad things on people who hurt us, replaying old arguments, and waiting for the universe to take our side.

Or we can spend it on the things that fill us back up.

The dog is snoring under the table. Rain is tapping gently on the window again. And Sarah is thinking about all the small actions that have quietly rebuilt her life.

Last time, she reacted straight away. This time, she waited.

Last time, she sent the message. This time, she put the phone down.

Last time, she spent her evenings on bitterness. This time, she spent them on charcoal, long walks and people who love her.

Last time, she waited for karma to punish someone else. This time, she created her own.

Because that’s what karma really is. Not revenge. Not the universe keeping score on our behalf. Just the quiet, steady truth that what we put our energy into is what grows.

She hasn’t checked whether karma has caught up with Madaline.

She’s realised it doesn’t matter.

Because the question was never will karma catch up with them?

The question was always this: What am I going to do with my energy next?

That’s the bit that’s actually yours.

Love from Missy Moo x