It wasn’t even the biggest step he’d taken in his life; that would have been in 1992 when he left his family for his one true love. And now, here it was again. The love of his life, staring him in the face and asking the same question:

“Are you ready?”

After the months of pumping himself up about the day, the second that he’d have to make this decision, he was. He was going to do it. It was more like the fact that he knew it could be done, but until this moment he had not believed that HE actually could. In the recesses of his mind, there were doubts, as there are in any 50 year old’s mind when he makes these kind of decisions; even those a great deal more trivial than the one he was about to make.

What was to happen next? What if he found what he was looking for, but it wasn’t what he’d built it up to be? What if he didn’t find it? What if he TURNED AROUND RIGHT NOW?

He wasn’t about to deal with those same questions he’d been asking himself since September. This was his moment, and he wasn’t going to be stopped by his own fear again. He looked up the stairwell one last time, turned and pulled the door shut behind him. This was it.