Chapter 7: Courage

The following is a work of fiction, and a continuation of the previous posts, Chapters 1-6: 

Companionship has a funny way of lingering. Even hours after someone is gone, you can still hear their laugh, smell their sweet cologne, or see lip marks on the rim of their wine glass. I left the party after literally saying the exact and simple phrase, "hello, how are you?" to two other individuals. That was my quota for the evening. I left the party and immediately took off the tall shoes I was wearing when I walked into my bungalow. I hadn't worn any type of wedge or heals in what felt like decades, when my feet used to endure the pain of heels for hours while dancing.

I was walking the short distance to my back deck barefoot, already with a lit cigarette in my hand. I told myself I had earned it after this evening. The companionship of talking with the sweet girl lingered in my head. Sure, I had interacted with strangers these past few months - waiters at restaurants, grocers at the supermarket, tellers at the bank. But all of these people were paid to do their job and talk to me. They all had an agenda. I let out a long exhale from my cigarette and realized one word described my life at that moment: secluded. That's exactly what I had come down to Florida to do. Seclude myself from life. Seclude myself from my past, from friends, from family, from my secrets, from my regrets. And I had succeeded. I realized that Cindy stirred my soul. A small part of me wanted a friend to talk to and sadly, this little girl Cindy seemed like the most genuine person I had met in decades.

Others might judge me for how much I've smoke and drank. But my clearest and most profound thoughts seem to come to life in those moments. My current lifestyle of smoking and drinking was probably slowly killing me; but my seclusion probably put me on an even faster track. So judge away, but I chose drinking and smoking during that time.

I smoked a few more cigarettes that evening and realized my past could never be fixed. Never could I go back and redo conversations I regretted, impulsive choices that led me down this secluded road, or the people I had surrounded myself with. I didn't know where I needed to begin, but I knew I needed to talk more with this girl Cindy and remind myself of how to be that 15 year old girl again.

I woke the next morning with the most awful headache. This was only a result of being hungover. Oh wait, it was a result of getting drunk from too much wine and smoking what must have been half a pack of cigarettes. I didn't want to move when my alarm went off for my usual morning run. It's a shame the high you get at night can't last through the morning and instead you feel pain from your poor life decisions. Although, maybe that's why God designed things that are bad to consume in excess that exact way.

I mustered the courage to pull myself out of bed around midday and immediately made myself a large pot of coffee after downing two glasses of water that tasted like heaven. I looked over on the wooden kitchen island, and saw a scribbled note. I must have written the note the night before while in my incapacitated state of mind. There was a small word in cursive black writing written directly in the middle of the paper: courage. I smiled through the pain of my headache and realized my drunk self was a lot smarter these days than my sober self, and I needed to change that. I only had one thing I needed to do that day, find myself a bottle of malbec wine.