Boss Babes

The Secret of Your Future is Hidden in Your Daily Routine

I texted the number on Kirra's business card on my third day using the Flourish regimen.

'It's Adderal,' I realized, 'It's like all-natural Adderal.' 

Finally, I had found a correct descriptor for what the Flourish products felt like. The effects crashed into me like a roaring tsunami wave on the second day around lunchtime. No longer did I struggle with executive dysfunction while side-eyeing the never-ending stack of paperwork to process piling up on the edge of my desk. I zipped from one task to another with precision. The energy and focus plateaued around mid-afternoon, but I still had enough pep in me to organize and put away a neglected pile of clean laundry in my bedroom upon returning home that evening. Typically a neurotic neat-freak, the depression and burnout had caused me to neglect my sacred space the past month or so.

"Hey! Glad you're enjoying your mini Flourish experience!  Wanna meet up? " she replied

"For sure! When is a good time for you?" I texted back immediately. Whatever this Flourish stuff was, I needed more. Not in the sense of a drug craving, but I felt like a drowning person being tossed a lifeline. 

***

Twenty minutes later, I was wandering around a sprawling, dilapidated apartment complex on the edge of town. Kirra lived somewhere in this safe haven for crackheads and the working poor. Not that there was anything wrong with the working poor, since I found myself in that tax bracket as well. Crackheads, on the other hand, had broken into my car and stolen my weed box a few months ago. I was still quite salty about it.

A blonde head popped out of an upstairs window and waved at me. Rapunzel in her tower.

"You have to push the door up when you twist the handle," she yelled down to me. I shoved the door to her building in with my shoulder until it granted me entry, wryly reflecting how most editorial think-pieces about us Working Poors neglected to mention these fun anecdotes about apartment living. They never fail to mention the cockroaches in the dishwashers, though, so they do get some things right.

My nasal passages were immediately assaulted with an overwhelming stench of patchouli upon entering Kirra's apartment. 

'Holy stomboli,' I thought, 'and I thought I had dirty hippie tendencies.' I tried not to visibly gag, since that would be rude. 'At least it's not dog shit. It could be dog shit.' I have cousins with purse dogs they allow to defecate wherever they please and I've never seen them clean up after their pets. I don't visit them often since I can't last more than 3 minutes in their house without adding my own vomit to the pet mess.

A metaphysical shop and a preschool had chaotically collided and spewed it detritus in the cramped space.  Salt lamps, teething rings, geodes, plush alphabet blocks and chakra posters, oh my! It was a pretty cozy space, though, and I felt somewhat comfortable despite the mess.

"Do you want something to drink?" Kirra offered me. I affirmed and she motioned for me to follow her into the kitchen.

"So, Flourish isn't just the three steps! They have another line called 'Enhance' with other products to help complement the experience," she said and pulled a purple box down from a cabinet. After extracting two thin packets, the same kind that instant tea usually came in, she passed me the box for further inspection.

'Flourish Greens is a supplementary addition to your 1-2-3 Flourish Experience! Containing your complete, daily recommended servings of fruit and vegetables, it is also gluten free, supports your immune system, helps cleanse your body, and balance your natural ph levels for optimum performance!'

"Why is the box purple if they product is called 'Greens?'" I asked, slightly confused. 

"Maybe because it's berry flavored?" Kirra shrugged, as if she had never considered the contradiction. She dumped a packet of the mixture into a glass of water, stirred it, and passed it to me. I took a sip and wrinkled my nose. It was if someone who had never developed a proper sense of taste attempted to make a berry tea based solely on another person's description of the vague idea of it. If the beverage had been carbonated, it might have been more palatable. Kirra grabbed her own glass of the grainy, radioactive sludge and we settled onto the couch in the other room. Feeling slightly awkward, I kept stirring mine to help it dissolve more.

"So, you're liking the experience so far?" she inquired. I glanced up from the science experiment in my hands.

"This stuff is fabulous! I just feel better overall. Not to be weird, but I have depression and this is the best I've felt in a very long time. What the heck is in it?" I admitted.

"I'm not sure exactly - everything is still patent-pending and kind of a trade secret so they won't tell us exactly how it works, but I have really bad anxiety and I've been able to overcome that thanks to Flourish! That's why I became a promoter for them - I wanted to help other people! I'm an empath and really intuitive, and when I met you I just KNEW somehow that I should give you a mini-experience!" Kirra bubbled. Her eyes started sparkling; just radiating a happy, positive, passionate energy. I was still making baby steps along my spiritual path, and I wondered if I had, through a wonderful twist of fate, encountered a more advanced being that would guide me on my journey. I also made a mental note to Google "Empath" once I returned home to figure out what that meant - maybe some kind of psychic?

We chatted for a while about her chakra poster, some of the other Flourish products, and animated movies she enjoyed watching with her son. I found myself handing her my debit card and watching her set me up a customer account on her laptop. I was all set to receive a month's supply of the 3-step regimen, and should expect it to arrive on my doorstep in a few days. The package cost about $200, but I reasoned that since I had cut back some on drinking lately, I could technically afford it since I wasn't going to patronize the depressing corner dive as regularly as before.

Kirra had an entire pantry-style freestanding cabinet filled with semi-shredded boxes of the packets. My natural neatfreakiness cringed and wanted to organize them for her, by color and size, into labeled plastic bins. How on earth could she find anything in there or know when to restock? 

To tide me over until then, she gave me a gallon-size ziploc with more of the now-familiar colorful packets in it, and threw some other odds and ends into it from the Enhance line for me to sample. Somehow, she knew exactly where to find everything in there.

'Maybe this is her intuition at work,'  I thought wryly to myself. I had also observed that Kirra was extremely chatty. She bounced from one subject to the next with barely a breath in between, blonde curtain of curls swishing behind her, hands waving wildly, and eyes sparkling like the sun on a lake at dawn. There were not too many opportunities to get my own words in, but I didn't really mind. Part of me wished I had brought a notebook along to write down the nuggets of information about the company she worked for and the dozens of products they carried. 

Before I realized how exactly it occurred, I had agreed to go to a meetup at her friend's house the following week. Apparently, there were other girls who promoted the products in our area and the got together regularly to talk about....not sure what, exactly? It had something to do with the Law of Attraction, but intrigued me and I didn't have many friends. Something about a tight-knit group of like-minded girls working on some higher aspirations called to me on a primeval level.

'Maybe it's a coven. It kind of sounds like a coven,' I giggled to myself on the drive home. 'I wouldn't mind joining a coven, since I've been doing my own magick working on my own for a while. This sounds pretty cool," 

All I had been instructed to bring was a notebook and an open mind. 

That I could do, and I found my usual introverted, solitary, antisocial self strangely looking forward to seeing the bubbly blonde again.

**********

Author's Notes - I've read a few other offerings on this platform, and it seems traditional to offer up some kind of notes for further clarity at the end of each chapter/installment. So we're going to do that here as well in that spirit.

Every chapter title is a motivational quote meme thing and the header image is that particular meme. We're only two published chapters in, but you may have already picked up on this deliberate pattern already. There's absolutely a method to this madness: MLMs like to bastardize quotes for their own nefarious purposes, so I am borrowing that idea for my chapter titles. 

If I had an Instagram, I would promote new chapters using these graphics, and in an ideal world the platform would permit me to link directly to the fresh content. But I don't have an Instagram; I deleted Insta, Twitter, Facebook and Messenger last year on a social media detox kick. I do have a Reddit though and you can find me there under u/hippiecrack128 . I'll be posting in the Wattpad subreddit whenever I post a new chapter or have other writing updates. I'm fairly new to both platforms and would love to be friends and read your work as well! =(^.^)=