Hop, Shop and a Leap - A Short Story

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Endless bills pour in the mailbox, which sits in the driveway, regardless of wind and rain. Claire was fighting the urge to buy a great pair of high red pumps, one last time. Another bill won’t do any harm, she thought. There was this endless need for her to buy things no matter what happens in her life, the sky falls, the rain is pouring or the banks are chasing her to pay the credit card bills.

As the year was coming to an end, she wanted a miracle in her life, that will change her life. She has been waiting for, praying for, some kind of top-down change, but now she knows it won’t happen that way. She was fooling herself all along she thought it will.

“I can’t live like this, not anymore”, she cried out loud, stark naked with her emotions being honest with herself instead of swallowing all the things she said to herself earlier — “I don’t care,” “ It is a great stress buster”, “It is a delight to shop”, party line, the famous ones people got away with.

As the year was closing, when the clock struck at midnight, she dug into her purse, with a pair of scissors, and cuts all the cards- credit card, visa, master, corporate, and whatever that is that allowed her to take credit, which has accumulated over the years of a crazy drive of materialism, right through the middle, cutting it into two halves.

Perhaps there will still be people out there chasing that lifestyle we’ve been groomed for from childhood to crave, accumulate, buy more, that life equals consumption, success equals consumption!

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