Brisk steps carried my body forward as I entered the one room motel studio my family called home.   Relief at having quit a job I hated and fear that my mother and brother would resent me for losing work that brought in a hundred and fifty dollars a week colored my comments as I related my story.  No glares confronted me as I spoke, just looks that conveyed the weariness and worry all three of us had become accustomed to.  
Outside the electric buzz of the hotel’s hallway lamp lights never ceased.  Less than a mile away the highway’s oceanic roar of traffic continued even at the late hours of the night, suffusing existence with a soft white noise.  From where I sat, near our one window, off in the distance I could see bright blue-white and orange points of light that I knew to be the houselights of hundreds of homes that cover the hills of Mission Valley.  Inside the 70’s era lampshades tinted the milky-white light bulbs shading the entire room an unhealthy orangish-brown.  The ambience reminded me of the coloring of that restroom package, the color of waste people create after a strict diet of hamburgers and cola.  
I mentioned my financial aid would be in soon, hoping to brighten the mood.  They looked at me with empty faces and I tried to smile while frowning and grimacing.  There were a lot of causes for my failure to achieve satisfactory financial aid status when I returned to school in January.  None of them mattered to the women who sat behind the desks in the financial aid office and informed me that satisfactory financial aid status requires 8.0 units of enrolled classes.  None of that mattered to my family as they stared at me blankly and then quietly looked away from me.  
It was April now and we were still living in this run down motel, making thirty five dollar payments on our day to day room.   I couldn’t blame them for being a little upset, so was I.  My brother had refused to get a job since he graduated high school in 2000.  No amount of pleading could get him to stop smoking weed and staying out until four in the morning.  My mother had consistently refused to stop gambling away her money at Barona casino.  No discussions could stop her from claiming her right to do WHAT she wished HOW she wished WHEN she wished with HER money.  So, following their example, I quietly turned my face towards the TV to see what was on that night.  I think it was NBC.
  At first the one room box, part of a fourth floor that to me bizarrely felt like it was sagging towards the ground, of a motel situated between a very loud highway and a rarely visited river was just a place to sit and wait while circumstances rearranged, reshaped themselves until they could provide a better place to sit and wait.