Stepping Out ~ 2

Stepping Out ~ 2

Light seeped thinly from the kitchen under the old wooden door into the level basement. Under a faded and fringed shade yellowed light pooled around his old green reading chair. In that overstuffed chair, he buried himself in travels through fiction and non-fiction. The written word was the only thing that interested him anymore. That the wide and deep basement was not completely finished was of no matter. Richard Gladstone decided that the morning mirror he had seen himself in had lied. His  mood only supported the lies. His beliefs about the ouside world and his family were more opinions than beliefs. Richard had thought them so long that they had taken on the patina of belief. And all of it coloured his attitudes. Richard shook his head slowly as these thoughts layered themselves over the words he was reading. Laying his book aside, he shook both head and hands violently flinging heavy drops of sticky emotion away from him, leaving them on the dusty carpet at his feet.

“What are you going to do!?” his muttered whisper dissolved into the darkness outside of the pool of lights. 

His attitudes were as thin and brittle as his posture. To bend them may be dangerous. On the other hand, his choice to remain seated, reading and ‘testing’ the wines now seemed barely comfortable. Books often slipped noiselessly out of his hands to the floor by the end of any evening.

He rose stiffly and walked toward the side door leading outside. Richard had no use for A.A., any part of it. And he had no use any longer for alcohol - only that there was a malicious craving that he couldn’t explain to anyone. And if Richard tried, eyes glazed over and conversation turned to gossip, weather, politics - anything else. His cell phone rang - a fragile electronic connection to the outside world. He hesitated to answer, but courtesy got the best of him.

‘Coffee? In fifteen minutes? Good, I’ll see you at The Coffee Barn in fifteen.’ 

His decision made, Richard stepped through the door into the open night.

“Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when 

you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.”

~ Shannon L. Adler