The First Longing

Dear T.V.,

It's been four calendar days and tonight was my first night of longing for your anesthetizing presence.

I will confess that today at work, at the suggestion of my boss, I consumed you in full view and alongside my coworkers. As you recall, that was the one of the conditions in which it was permissible to invite you back into my world and it is so soon after leaving you that it seemed second nature to drink you in, and I did.

Five hours were given to you.

During commercial breaks I did minor work related productions of sending emails, but I know you don't care about that.

Like an recently spurned lover, you only wish to know how I had come to crave you this evening, and how intensely those cravings were. You wish to know only how this longing translates into suffering in you absence, my love.
It happened just after the call with the Crew ended. I was heating up a quick meal before heading to see my friend, and it hit me.

With a sigh, as I plated the food for heating....you were there. So was the hurt in my chest.

Hurt from what? The pain of being mildly vulnerable on a call? Pain from the anticipated destination I would be departing to? Or perhaps it was pain from remaining silent at the barrage of conversations that had occurred throughout the day that are unknowingly fat-shaming/body shaming. Was it hurt from the moment of quiet that finally allowed me to see the self-harm I had inflicted upon to myself all day? Perhaps it was a withdraw put me into a hangover from five hours with you and I just ached for more.
It is hard to say.
I do know that my heart hurt.
And I do know that I craved you.

I knew where you were. Twenty five feet away from where I stood, behind a blue bin in my garage, but I did not actually want you. I wanted what I thought you could do for me...and that was to take this hurt and put it somewhere in my brain where I would not feel it so acutely and ideally, fall asleep and "forget" about it.

[...]

In hours that follow I notice how I reach to music in moments of silence, volume at near full blast in my ear buds, in an effort to anesthetize me but she brings memories and emotions of her own (as you know). Even your screen kin- social media, is not as effective without you....

Oh T.V. how I miss you. Like Jamine Janai's song says, "I'm fucked up on the memories of your real good loving." You never left me. You were always there.  Under my full command, at the flip of a switch, you always gave me what I wanted. Your extra screen....all 26 inches of it...*bites lower lip* you were always there to help me not deal with any pain.

I reflect on how I caught glimpses of you though doorways and window panes throughout the evening. Sometimes you have an audience, other times you are just a companion noise to an otherwise lonely place.

Inexplicably, my limbic brain flashes the image of Uriel (wtf!?). He is a flesh and blood lover of my past who resurface rather recently in a effort to combat his own loneliness. I am keeping him a mile away from me. An emotionally violent man, he would be a destructive distraction from both you and this hurt with nuclear consequences. I ask my limbic brain why it would do this...and it's answer is one related to hormones.

I tell my limbic brain, "That's a stupid thing to do." And as I pass that judgment on myself I can feel you laughing at me.

I pull out my journal. And I write. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't have to. But it's about my heart.

I ask myself honestly what it is that I want. And the answer comes more accurately in the form of deficit. What is that I do not want. I do not want you like I do a bad lover. I do not want you like I do that a hit of weed. I do not want you to anesthetize my pain. I do not want you, period. Not tonight. And not this year.

-Sarah