Here is my first short story of steemit.
We all have priorities but it's important they all don't suffer despite our scale of preference. But wjat really determines how we scale our priorities.
Take a pause!!! Hold your thoughts....
Read and enjoy.
Darkness closed up on him. Silence rent his mind. It was the perfect atmosphere he needed to exercise meditation and he would stay locked in until his mind was let free.
Tears trickled down his cheeks, worry exasperated his eyes and his handkerchief offered little in wiping the tears that flowed out simultaneously.
“Wha….t do I have to live for?” He asked himself. His heart palpitating as he muttered those words. “Those I live and work for have brought shame to me.”
Scenes from the past played across his mind writhing him in pain and emotional anguish.
He could not keep his eyes from the camera lights as they flickered at him from all directions after he had delivered a speech that earned him a thunderous applause. It was a usual scene for him to be placed on the spotlight and he considered it deserving for all his hard work.
That scene slid and in a second or two he saw his son in a cell of criminals at the police state headquarters, having been arrested for paying a group of thugs to attack a young guy he claimed was stalking his girlfriend.
“Is this the kind of man I made of you?” He screamed at his son having sorted his bail terms.
“You forged my signature,” he said with gnashing teeth, “and withdrew money from my account to pay thugs and lavish on a harlot you call a girlfriend.”
“You are a fool and a worthless son,” he squeaked at him.
He felt darkness grip him but not that of the room but of his heart.
“I worked hard for wealth and fame and I attained it all but my family is in a wreck,” he thought to himself, transfixed in horror, his hands and legs shaking terribly.
“What shame! What shame!”
His daughter cried and beg the young boy to claim responsibility for her pregnancy but even though he agreed, he made it known there was a slim chance the baby in her womb was a seed of one of his friends.
“What insolence?” He bawled out at the young man. “What audacity?” He yelled. “When did my daughter become a climbing stock for peasant men?”
He leaned onto his chair against the wall with his hands folded across his chest, closing his eyes to the darkness before him.
“Now, I have to watch her carry that baby for another six months for a boy with no future ambition,” he murmured, heaving a big sigh.
“I’ve had enough,” he said to himself. “Stop!” he spoke to his mind. “I do not want to remember that.”
But he could not stop his mind from playing the recap and there was his wife kneeling, pleading for forgiveness for letting another man drink from the same well he drank.
“I felt lonely,” she said weeping. “You were never a companion I could lean on, cry on, cuddle and play with for twenty years. All I got from you was money not friendship and I was lost when he offered me all I missed and deserved from you. I’m sorry, I still can’t fathom how I let it happen.”
“Please forgive me,” she begged.
He leaned on his chin, his teeth gritting in pain.
“I-I-I was busy, b-b-but never felt lonely and never let go of my guard. A-and there she is asking for forgiveness,” he stuttered in his cracking voice.
He was so much overwhelmed he failed to notice the moonlight had let its way into the darkness and cast a shadow against the wall. He got up and pushed open the door but fell off as he emerged from the dark. The light from the electric bulb had stung his eyes and his empty bowels which last received the blessings of meals four days before had no reservoir to carry him on.
“I refuse to be a coward and I refuse to let my joy and happiness depend on anyone,” he whispered.
“I’ll dispel this shame and take hold of my first responsibility, my family. This time I’ll reorder my priorities, let go of this worry and let in joy and happiness,” he mumbled his words, crawling in pain with a determination to change his course.
