Within a twenty-mile radius of where I sit at this very moment, a young mother and father are sitting on hard plastic chairs with a faulty fluorescent light fluttering above their head. A copper colored woman in a white overshirt with Doctor’s credentials clipped to the breast pocket is quietly explaining her dire concerns about their child. The father is numb with terror. The mother feels her bones coming apart from one another, for she cannot exist if the doctor’s worst case scenario comes to pass.

Within a twenty-mile radius of where I sit at this very moment, a nineteen year old Law Student is being pushed down a narrow cinderblock hallway by his wrists. The handcuffs are too tight, but he says nothing. The hallway tees, and the kid steps to his right, but processing is down the left hallway. The cop hooks a paw into the young man’s bicep and spins him in the other direction. He has to pee, but isn’t sure he should ask. Surely, someone will ask him if he needs to use a restroom at some point, right? He knows he’s going to have to call his father in the near future and – in a series of mental home movies – he roleplays how he’s going to cross the verbal chasm between “Hey dad?” and “I’m never going to be a lawyer now, dad. And that might be the least of my worries.”

Within a twenty-mile radius of where I sit at this very moment, a thirty-four year old single mother of three was just informed that her job has been eliminated. She has nine dollars in her pocket and she owes the bank $56 dollars in overdraft fees because tomorrow is payday. Her last payday. There’s an extra $400 of severance in her paycheck that will be taxed at Capital Gains rates, so it’s actually only an extra $236. She’ll have enough money to cover rent this month, but that’s about it. Her mom died of pancreatic cancer eleven years ago on Mother’s Day. She has no safety net. No one she can call. She’s pulling picture frames off her desk into a box and trying not to cry where coworkers (well… former coworkers, right?) can see her. It occurs to her that she could call her ex-boyfriend. That’s a bleak option. It took five years to finally cut the strings with him. The last thing she needs is him back in her life. No, that’s not true. The last thing she needs is to be unemployed one month before Christmas.

And exactly where I sit there’s a forty –six year old man with a pretty good job. He’s depressed today because the dream he’s had since he was nine years old ran up and tweaked his nose, turned around, dropped its pants, shook its buttocks, and ran off laughing. The man has a wife who is supportive. She’s also gorgeous. The man’s wife has troubles of her own these days. The wife’s troubles are considerably more life-shaking than the man’s dream deferred, his popping raisin in the sun. His bills are paid. His truck has another hundred thousand miles to go before it starts falling apart. His heart – despite painful ventriloquism to the contrary – is fine.

And the man knows that he’s being a self-defeating goofball, wallowing in manufactured grief. He wants to stand up from the chair and move on. Go somewhere. Find motion. Shake off the penny-ante dogshit on his shoulders and go forth.

Still and yet; the man sits. The man sits and waits for the despair to go bother someone else for a while.