Darla Rose was a perfectionist, much to her constant dismay. It was her mother's fault, she told herself. After all, it had been her mother who'd pushed her and pushed her all those years ago to do things right. "A job worth doing is a job worth doing well", she'd say, with a kind of bitterness, Darla thought, that was reflected in the way her lips seemed to take on a cruelty that she couldn't quite define without the unique perspective of hindsight.
It was a bright day. Darla was up at six. It was unlike her, seeing as she was essentially a lazy person. Perfectionist, yes, but like all perfectionists Darla found the whole prospect of living her life having to prove herself to everyone else such a monumental burden that she could barely find the motivation to open her eyes.
Life wasn't fun for her.
Well, that wasn't entirely true. Life was fun in her imagination, at least now and then it was. It was fun in her dream romances, where her perfect man swept her off her feet and loved her in a way that she...wasn't entirely clear about, but did nevertheless love her.
Darla's biggest problem, she was told by her rather expensive, slightly irritating therapist, was that she just didn't really know how to play.
"But that's the problem when the outcome has to be so precise" he would tell her, with a smirk of self satisfaction that would sometimes make her feel a combination of shame, hurt, envy and anger that this slightly pompous foreigner (he was Argentinian) would understand her better than herself.
He was right, of course, but for Darla to accept herself now, at 37, would mean big changes that perhaps she just wasn't able to do.
But it was clear to her that change was needed, at least.
She went to the kitchen and opened the fridge, grabbing an unopened can of coffee, which she put beside the coffee maker. A miaow from outside the front door told her that her cat, always impatient with a kind of unjustified self importance that she envied constantly, wanted to come in.
"Hello, little one!" she said, opening the door wide to the cat.
The cat, an expensive Burmese that had been given her by a dying friend a couple of years earlier, trounced in the way so many cats do, with an air of magnificent ownership of her home.
The cat miaowed again, demanding food. Darla went to the cupboard and reached for the dry cat food and spilled a handful or two into the cat's bowl. The cat glanced at her momentarily with a look of "is that all?" before consuming what was given. A few mouthful later he would be demanding the wet food which he knew was in Darla's fridge. For now, though, the dry would do.
THursday. At least it wasn't tuesday, which was such an awkward day. Thursday was at least just a day before friday, which was at least the end of the week. Not that she was working, and had the responsibilities most others had, of course. She was lucky. SHe had the inheritance to live off. She loathed that each day meant taking another little nibble from the pie, but that was really life for her, she thought. Each day she grew a little older, and each
END
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