My aunt used to wish bad things on people. I know how that sounds, but that’s just how she was. If she didn’t like someone, or if she was jealous of them, she could say some really awful things. She’d talk about them getting sick or something bad happening to them, or she’d just say, “They’ll get theirs.” I heard things like that enough that eventually I stopped paying much attention to it. I figured she was angry, bitter, whatever. People say things they don’t mean when they’re mad.

Then family members started getting sick and dying. One by one. I didn’t connect it to her at first because honestly, why would I? People get sick every day. People die. I knew that. But it still felt strange to me because my family had always been pretty healthy. That’s what I grew up expecting. Then suddenly it felt like people were disappearing one after another, and I couldn’t make sense of it.

The part I kept coming back to was my aunt. She wasn’t exactly the healthiest person in the family. Actually, she was probably one of the unhealthiest. Yet somehow she kept going while people who seemed healthier than her were dying.

Then I started remembering some of the things she’d said about these people when they were alive. That’s when it started getting weird for me. Some of them were people she really didn’t like. Some she was jealous of. Some she had been angry with for years. I remembered her wishing bad things on people and started wondering about it in a way I never had before.

My aunt believed a lot in putting things out into the universe and getting them back. Manifesting things, basically. Usually when people talk about manifestation, they’re talking about getting a better job or finding love or making more money. But I started wondering, what if the thing you’re constantly putting out there isn’t something good? What if you’re constantly thinking about someone getting sick, failing, losing everything, or finally “getting what they deserve”?

I don’t know. Maybe that sounds crazy. Sometimes it sounds crazy to me too. There could be completely normal explanations for every person who got sick and every person who died. Maybe I started connecting things because I was grieving and trying to understand why so many people were suddenly gone. I really don’t know.

But I also can’t pretend I didn’t hear the things I heard. I can’t forget the way she talked about certain people or how much anger she could carry toward someone for years. And once those same people started getting sick or dying, it was hard not to remember what she’d said about them.

Maybe it was all coincidence. Maybe there was nothing more to it than that.

I just know I stopped laughing when she said someone would “get theirs.”

And somewhere along the way, I started hoping she’d never say it about me.