Dear friend that I do not know,
Nothing about me is new. I cannot see where I have come nor can I see where I can go. If they were to lift the camera and peek through the viewfinder, they would find the truth. I need to escape the quicksand of an unremarkable life—I have lived it too long without hope of being released.
Despite this, I feel like I am living in a simulation. The weather is too perfect until a slight breeze drags me back to reality. Instead of fading out into the background when I see an unjust situation, I feel myself clarify and wipe the fog away—with my newfound clarity, I can make a decision that I will not regret, or regret less—unlike my earlier decisions of staying silent.
From the horribly convincing outside, I seem as though I am just an unemotional, judgemental, and skeptical person. You were so real, and it terrified me. I think I had forgotten several things when I stepped into this mindset. I lay back and closed my eyes, sinking into the soft soil beneath the comforting carpet of the grasses.
I have the energy. I need to burn it off, and I want to burn it off as a blazing torch into the battlefield. And yet, in her youth, she is so very old. I’m nine and wondering why things keep moving and why I’m not at the center of it all.
Unlucky 13, prime number 13, 13 that I never reached when learning times tables. 13 years of trying to jam together puzzle pieces that were never meant to connect. Between the blurred, gray scenes that fast forward at 24x speed, there are full-color moments several times per season. Teenagers are as flippant as the fluctuating days that pass, and I am no different, but I can bask in the relief that it is only a natural part of the swirling funnel.
Because, before long, I will once again be smothered by raging ambition juxtaposed with quaking fear. Behind my eyes, I am consumed by this mature contradiction, but outwardly, I am curled up on the couch, watching cartoons on my day off from school.
I swallow my tears in a hard gulp that I feel drop into my stomach and pool up in my feet. When boredom hits, my buried sentiments arise. Reality hits, and suddenly, they fade out of relevance. It’s my own version of the ever-irritating “back in my day…” story that nobody really wants to hear.
I didn’t do anything except follow in the footsteps of those who created the recipe. My brain buzzes with words that want to be spoken—words that can never be spoken. Words that will live out their days lost in the labyrinth of my mind, never to escape from my lips.
Maybe nothing was as bad as it had seemed when the tea-stained skies stayed stagnant. Maybe all I needed was to sit on a beach towel in my best friend’s backyard on a day for popsicles and starting first grade, my fingers resting on top of the sun’s as we lean back on our hands and raise our faces to the harmonious abstract above.
The television buzzes and short-circuits as if a fuse has been blown. I stare at the static until the screen shuts off in that all-too-familiar early 2000s way. The series has ended. The channel has been shut down. There is no fifth season.
I look at the blank TV, only being faced with my reflection on its slightly concave screen. Four years of airtime, four seasons, four lives I’ve lived. I’ll admit it; I’m attached to the characters, the plot, the directors, and even the film quality. It’s all so familiar—so warm. But nothing gold can stay, not even the sepia tint on the screen.
And with that, A Televised Edition comes to a close.
