Lucy scrolled mindlessly through the ton of beautifully bright photos, from which people of all sizes and occupations were smiling back at her, projecting their happiness and fulfillment on the things they were, obviously, selling.
‘I am not that person …’, Lucy muttered to herself while looking at them being so happy, in jobs they loved, content with their looks and satisfied with their world.
If there was one word, that Lucy would have had to choose to describe herself, that would have been dissatisfied. She put down the phone and looked back in time.
From as long as she could remember she was never happy, or not even content with what she had, the world around her, and most of all her own person. She smiled to herself. For sure there are some good pills for that! Would she want to use them though? Not so sure.
Lucy had been like this for more than forty years, she did not want to turn into somebody else, but sometimes she did wonder, what it was like to just be content with your lot, to be satisfied with life’s little pleasures and just be, without always questioning everything and assuming everything was bad or evil.
Lucy was exhausted of so much introspection. She did not even know why she was bothering with it, it was widely known that it never led to anything good. Just even more heartache. As if life was not already difficult enough!
Sitting on the living room couch, flipping through the channels trying to find something to watch, Lucy heard a little noise at the kitchen door. It was an old door, which she had kept as it looked so antiquy that it gave the kitchen a lovely feeling.
Lucy could not see a person through the little, high window of the door so she assumed it must be the wind or something…
‘It will go away …’, she told herself going back to the TV.
It did not though. The noise became louder and it actually felt like somebody tried to open the door.
In her mind, Lucy went quickly through the possibilities. Her garden was fully enclosed so it was not very likely that a thief was at the door. Lucy knew what she needed to do, go upstairs and look out through the bedroom window to spy what was going on.
Pleased with her own quick thinking, she climbed the stairs and in a heartbeat she was staring at the empty back of the house.
‘This is ridiculous!’
There was nobody there, but she could have sworn she had heard something and she had seen the door handle move.
‘I am sure there is a pill for that …’, she amused herself while coming down the stairs.
When she turned to go in the living room, she was shocked to see that the back door was wide open and, from the outside, a very bright light was flooding the kitchen.
If she had had heart problems she was sure she would have had a heart attack, but as she did not, Lucy had no other option but to face the strangeness of the situation.
She was not sure what to do. Go back upstairs, lock herself in the bathroom and call the guards? And tell them what? There is this big light in my garden? They might fine her for calling the emergency services without reason or for trying a prank. No, she was on her own, and she was a grown up woman.
Emboldened by the certainty that there was nobody outside, Lucy grabbed a broom and slowly approached the door. With every step she took, she could see better through the light until, when she was fully outside, she saw that it was the sun reflected in a metal bowl that had been knocked over.
Lucy gave out a relieved, embarrassed chuckle.
‘For f***ks sake!’
As she went to the bowl to pick it up, a little kitten came out from behind and started meowing at her.
‘What in the world …?’
Lucy was stunned by the unexpected, tiny apparition.
The kitten was mainly black with just a few white patches on its paws and belly. It seemed so happy to see another being that it just stared at her meowing as if trying to tell her something.
Lucy deeply disliked cats, they were smelly, left hair everywhere, had fleas, ate birds, horrible little creatures. She needed to get rid of it.
‘How did you get in here?’, she asked the little cat talking back at her.
‘You must go!’, somehow Lucy thought that the cat will turn around and just leave, which of course it did not.
She decided that if she went into the house, the cat will have no other option but to go away. Bad plan. As soon as Lucy closed the door the cat positioned itself on the door mat and started meowing even louder.
You guess what happened next. Lucy picked up the cat, wearing gardening gloves of course, and went to throw it over the fence. A loud barking could be heard from the overly excited dog in the next garden.
‘Oh c***p!’, that is when Lucy heard that little voice in her head, while looking into the eyes of the little kitten whose life was literally in her hands.
‘I am not this person!’, and she knew that indeed she was not.
‘Fine, whatever!’
Lucy looked up online the closest animal shelter and, reluctantly she drove there, with the kitten temporarily named Kat.
As they got there they met a family that was looking for a young cat, of course the mother fell in love with the beautiful Kat. She really was a cat lady, she confessed to Lucy proudly.
In the quietness of the living room, while taking out her phone to enjoy a bit of mindless scrolling Lucy thought about the day. She was not one of those people, happy and content, but, with a tiny feeling of well being nestling comfortably in her chest, she realized she was not that bad either.
And she felt just that little bit content.