Here is the seven-year-old, convinced her parents no longer love her because they've taken away her shiny red tricycle for seemingly no reason. She feels miserable, worse than she's ever felt in her whole life, and the week her bike will sit in the garage, unused, seems like a vast eternity to her young mind.

Here is the nine-year-old, left bereft by the too-early death of her mother, ignored and ridiculed by a father battling his own grief. She cries every night, wondering how she can possibly face the morrow without the love and understanding of the only person who ever cared about her. The one thing that overshadows her pain is the anger - at God, at the world, at a father who should have been the one to die.

Here is the fourteen-year-old, struggling with his differences, friendless at school, mocked by those few he respects. No one understands his pain. No one is even willing to listen, but instead offers him only platitudes and advice that it will soon get better. It doesn't get better. Life, once simple, once good, becomes a series of disappointments and disallusionments. He is alone and knows that is how he will spend the rest of his life. It's their fault, for not listening, for not caring. They should have to pay, if only with their own guilt.

Here is the sixteen-year-old, watching silently from a distance, as the only boy she ever loved laughs with his new girlfriend. She knows they are laughing at her. Everyone is laughing at her. There is this terrible pain in the pit of her stomach, a knot of tension so real it pervades her every thought, her every breath. If only she were prettier. Smarter. More popular. Then he would still be with her. But she is none of those things, can never be any of those things no matter what she does, and the pain and humiliation get worse every day.

Here is the twenty-year-old, sitting with a near-empty bottle of vodka and the memories of the wife and child he drove away. He knows he has problems. Drinking too much. The jobs that never last more than a few months. The anger he directs towards those he loves. The only thing in his life he ever did that was "right" was to marry her when she became pregnant. And, now, even that is being taken away.

Here is the thirty-year old, walking the dark streets with fear in her eyes and an even darker certainty this night will end as have all the rest. She had dreams once, and followed those dreams as everyone always told her she should. But they never told her the cost of failure. They never told her life could be a series of disappointments and heartaches, one misplaced step placed after the one before it, until there was no where to turn and no way to turn back. They didn't tell her how much it could hurt.

Here is the forty-year-old, his life half spent, trapped on a path he never chose. He didn't realized the years would slip by so quickly, that the daily struggles to just survive would become the sum total of his entire existence. He no longer cares about his meaningless job, if ever he did. His family is just the anchor that held him in place for so long. He's young enough to remember the dreams of his youth, but too old now to begin chasing them. Is this all there is? Is this all there will be - for another forty years?

Here is the fifty-year-old, walking up the steps to his second mortgage, his hand trembling as he reaches for the door. His wife knows something is wrong the moment she sees his face, but she never guesses just how wrong. Downsizing, they call it. Early retirement, some joke. But he knows it for what it really is - a man who no longer has any value. Who is going to hire an old man? Who is going to pay the bills? Who is going to look through his mirror in the morning and convince him there's any reason to get out of bed?

Here is the sixty-year old, sitting in his shiny chrome wheelchair, the smell of new plastic drowned beneath the odor of the colostomy bag hanging at his side. The house looks different after all those weeks in the hospital. Smaller. His wife reorganized the furniture, widening the pathway from their bedroom to the TV, the only path he ever follows any more. It was just one of the many, many adjustments she's made for him. He is no longer a husband, not in any real sense of the word. He's just a burden. And, according to the doctors, this will continue for another ten or twenty years, until the degenerative disease takes his mind as well as his legs.

Here is the eighty-year-old, standing naked in his bathroom and staring at the indelible ink patterns the shower refused to touch. The radiologist will touch them up this afternoon anyway, religning the bulleyes so the deadly radiation can better be aimed. The treatment will last only seconds, unlike the interminable drive to and from the hospital, his daughter making small talk as she weaves through traffic, trying to pretend nothing has changed. Tomorrow they'll make the drive again, this time for chemo, for the clear plastic bag of lethal poison that will slowly drip into his viens. There's a twenty percent chance these trips will grant him another two years of life, instead of the few months he'll have without them. His daughter thinks it's worth it.