As Mary got out of the bank, she realized
there was only one more chance to get her dreams to come true. If she couldn’t
work it out this time, she would be done for good, as she had nothing to fall
back on. She had quite her job in a prestigious company and now she had
withdrawed every single penny she had saved. Once she got him, she started
making plans for every single cent, knowing how she would spend her money in
order to make her dreams come true.
Since she was a little girl, Mary had a
tendency never to get what she wanted. It was always some other kid, more
likely her sister, who got all the attention, all the love, all the gifts and
presents and everything from everyone whereas she had to settle with whatever
landed on her lap, basically. The times she complained, her parents argued that
she was jealous of her sister and that she shouldn’t be such a nasty little
girl. That kind of response was the main reason why she hadn’t spoken to any of
them in such a long time.
She wrote on a small yellow notebook every
single plan she had in order to make it all a success: she had to invest some
money buying stuff and then there would be a time of a few months in which she
would have to reduce the amount of money she spent drastically in order to
survive and have enough time to be successful. She had read several books and
informed herself of what she had to do, so it wasn’t like she had rushed
herself anywhere.
As per usual, no one would help her achieve
what she wanted. Mary had broken up with her boyfriend a few weeks ago and they
didn’t spoke at all after that. It had been a very healthy break up, when she
had accepted her mistakes and he had been very surprised she hadn’t attacked
him or tried to make him stay. The truth was that Mary had changed quite a lot
and simply had no time for such behavior now.
After she quit her job and decided t be
independent, she also realized there would be hours and hours of free time as
her business began to from so she decided to exercise at home and also try some
kind of diet. It would help a lot to spend less money and it would make her a
little more agile and awake, what she needed urgently because of her new lease
on life.
Even if people hadn’t seen it, she had always
been a very careful young woman, with her money and what she chose to say and
not to say. Mary had never been distracted but rather very focused and driven.
She knew most men didn’t like that and her family thought she was just jealous
of everyone so her achievements had always been clouded by the shadow of
someone she really wasn’t.
The idea was pretty simple. Since she had been
very young, her ambition had always been to have a pet. She had tried to make
her parents buy her a dog but that didn’t happen until she was fifteen and her
sister got one but she was twelve and wouldn’t really take care of the animal
so Mary ended up having to feed him, and groom him and do everything for him in
order to be healthy.
She noticed back then that the food pets got
could really use some work. They didn’t seem to be really delicious and she
even tried one to check out the flavor. Her sister saw her doing that and
immediately told her parents who told her she was disgusting and that they
wouldn’t let the dog near her if she did it again. And yet, she kept looking at
his toys, the ones that they sold at the stores and how the dogs interacted in
the park and, even back then, she had the idea.
Only now she was making it a reality. She had
many designs and recipes kept on that yellow book, thousands of small idea she
could bring to life if she only had the money and the energy to do it. She had
not tried it before because she was certain the idea would fail but now it was
different. Maybe it was that she had heard about her sister recently and was
jealous of her, as they had always claimed. Or maybe it was because of that man
that tried to have his way with her at work. Whatever reason it was, she was
thankful for it.
She bought ingredients, fabric, even clay to
do small versions of the toys she would like to produce. She tried the food
with the pets in her building or at the park wearing a vest and a hat she had
sewed herself with the potential name of her company: Pet Party. Some people
were interested and happily gave their dogs some of the treats and it was surprising
to see how they all wanted more. Of course, there was no sugar or nothing like
that in them, only vegetables and various proteins.
She
submitted her toy ideas to several factories and many of them rejected her
ideas because she thought she was joking or because they didn’t think her
designs were good. But she finally found one specialized in pets and they were
thrilled to work with her ideas.
Everything was slowly falling in to place. She
was making some dog’s clothes by herself, she had many ideas for smaller
animals like rabbits and hedgehogs and also for larger ones like horses. She
really had thought her idea through and was hoping to be able to achieve the
dream of her life. She wanted to prove herself that what people had always told
her was just a lie and that she was a good person and a smart one too.
Right then though, her parents made an
appearance. Of course, they criticized every single thing she was doing, they
hated the fact that she was doing a diet and that she had gotten slimmer,
saying she just wanted to be like her sister. They talked about her all the
time, telling her how successful she was as an actress and the fact that she
had paid for their trip, including the hotel and business class in flights and
all those things they had never enjoyed because of having two kids.
Mary did not say anything, trying not to let
them get to her. However, her father found her yellow book and started reading
it. He mocked her for her ideas and told her that she had to realize those
perfect businesses where everything goes perfect doesn’t exist and that they
are only achieved, if they exist, by people that have talent and that special
thing that she clearly didn’t have.
She didn’t love them but in that moment she
understood how devastating it truly was to have always been a disappointment
and a mistake for her parents. She let them know how much she had tried to be a
good daughter and how awful and despicable they were. Mary told them about
every single time in her life in which she only needed her parents to love her
and she had to do everything by herself because no one got her back, no one was
there to support her at all.
They tried to argue but she just told them she
was done with them for good and not to talk to her ever again. She pushed her
out the door and asked her building’s security guy to come and fetch them and
never let them in again. Same went to her sister, who she never heard about
anyway, unless it was trough his parents. She just quit to having a family and
it was surprisingly a very easy thing to do for her.
Six months after quitting her job, her
business had begun taking off. She received a lot of orders for her pet food
and also for the dog clothes she had designed. The toys were a bit cheap in
their build but people bough them anyway. She kept an online store for a while
until she was able to pay the rent of a small store not far from her house. In
a single year, she had won much more than in the rest of her life. She hired an
assistant and Pet Party was an example of good planning and success.
Mary loved the fact that she made people
happy. She wanted to make everyone feel that their pets deserved better, as she
had deserved better all her life and had needed a push to just do whatever it
was that she needed to do. And she was grateful for it. She had never been
happier, even if she had to give up her blood relatives in the process.
