I'm Adely Mone and this is The Slowdown.

I once had a person tell me that the only reason he made art was revenge.

It was funny at the time, but it also made me wonder about my own beliefs in fairness

and karmic implications.

I have serious ideas about justice, even in my adult life the phrase, well, life's not

fair.

Makes my stomach turn.

I want it to be fair.

I'm not sure even as I record this, what my beliefs are in terms of karma.

Does the kid who called me pizza face on the first day of seventh grade on account

of my bad acne brought on by puberty come back as a cockroach?

I don't know.

Do I want that to be true?

Sometimes?

But of course the issue becomes, is my sense of fairness, everyone's sense of fairness?

The people that have harmed me have also often been harmed themselves.

I think even of that boy and how hard his life seemed and how many people called him names

too.

Still, I went home crying that day, poured myself into my mom's gray car and sobbed.

I was now named pizza face on my very first day of seventh grade.

I scrubbed my face raw that night.

I wanted out of my whole body and I hated that boy for the two entire years of junior high.

...