Confessions of a Hungry Ghost: On Karma, Love & Becoming Whole

I was young, dumb, and betrayed. You know what they say about a woman scorned?

Well- I didn’t burn his house down, but I did burn down a few relationships. Not with fire, but with sex.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but most of what I called sexual liberation was actually revenge in a cute outfit. A performance of power to cover up the powerlessness that lived in my bones.

You want to feel close to me? Use my body to fill your emptiness? Fine. But you’re going to wish you hadn’t asked. Because when I’m through with you, you’ll be begging for more. I will be the air you breathe, and you will suffocate without me.

It would take years of unlearning to understand my true motives. In the meantime, I was guzzling the souls of my beloveds like they were cheap glasses of Cupcake wine—sweet at first, but always ending in a headache I saw coming.

I was a hungry ghost, a humanoid spirit mummified by rage. A black hole in lipstick. I had to stop. But I had to eat. The fuel I clung to was numbness.And betrayal? It felt like dessert.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know love or peace, I did. I’d touched them. But my anger had eaten me from the inside out. And somewhere along the way, it decided one victim wasn’t enough.It wanted more. Every morning, my pain pulled me out of bed and whispered, “Let’s do it again.”

But something else had begun to stir, something with self-respect. Something begging me to chart a different course, lest I devour all potential for happiness.

By that time, I was deep in my studies,

reading ancient religious texts for my history degree, using my assignments as a treasure hunt for meaning. I was sure if I read enough mystics, I’d find the map to fulfillment.

But what I found was karma.Not in a meme or a yoga class—but in ancient Sanskrit scripture.

Fuck.

Because suddenly I wasn’t just hurting people.I was also on the hook for it. Energetically. Cosmically. And I knew I wasn’t done causing harm. Not then.

The weight of my actions were trailing behind me like a tin-can wedding car, loud and chaotic. My past clanged at my heels. What would come back to find me?

A crippling health disorder? The taken life of my first born? Or would I work my life away to make a million dollars, only to lose it in a lawsuit from a car accident?

But no thought haunted me more than romantic retribution. An eye for an eye.

The love of my life swept me off my feet, only to abandon me years later? Or worse—what if he were a sex addict in disguise, cheating behind my back and giving me syphilis?

That’s the karma that made my chest seize. That’s the one that made me want to fast-track sainthood, or at least go celibate for a season.

I wondered if some of the harm I caused could be canceled out because it happened to me first. Would that make it even? Maybe, but deep down I knew I had already overplayed that hand. I hadn’t just passed the pain forward—I had leveraged it. Used it like a currency.

And yet—through all of that—I was still loved. Over and over again. Even in my mess, someone always loved me. And I always loved them back. Imperfectly, painfully, tenderly. That was the thing I couldn’t ignore: I wasn’t evil. I wasn’t incapable. I just hadn’t known how to stay with love when it arrived.

Both things were true: I had hurt people. And I had loved them.

So what is karma anyway?

Is it a cosmic bank account I’ve been slowly rebuilding for the last ten years? Or am I still borrowing from a crashing market, praying I don’t default? I don’t know.

But what I do know is this: love and pain are always tangled. People can love you and still hurt you. Just like I had.

And I’ve learned that hurting others is rarely about cruelty, it’s about pain that has nowhere else to go. It spills out, leaks sideways, touches everything. Hurt people hurt people. But I believe- deeply- that healed people heal people, too.

I’m 31 years young. Unmarried. In love.

Time will tell what my heart endures. But what I’m certain of is this: I can endure. And not just survive it, but alchemize it. I can find peace, even in pain. Because love, despite it all, is always just around the corner. And I’m finally learning to meet it without flinching.