It’s 2005 and I’m curled up on the faded, blue carpet of my bedroom floor, back against my bed, eyes glued to the tv on top of my dresser. It’s sometime around 3:00 pm and I’m engrossed in one of my television shows, back when ABC Family was still in existence under the same name. My afternoons are always spent like this: alone, quiet, and safe. The small bubbles of time that I am allowed to exist as myself. I stay glued to the floor until 5:42 pm hits, always that exact time, the garage door begins to open and my heartbeat quickens. I dash around my room, hiding what I should have cleaned up prior to my window of opportunity closing—dishes, clothes, toys. My mom opens the door and my world goes dark. I don’t know what happens next; my memory only exists in those bubbles of freedom. 

There is bliss in my shows; they provide me with things that I don’t get elsewhere. I enjoy the predictability and the rationality. I value the sense of family and love, even if it is only coming from a screen. I learn so much about how to be, to act, and to feel. Things make sense and my world feels normal. When the episode ends and when the tv goes off, the characters stay with me, if only in essence and lessons. I live in this in-between world because I know it is the only way that I can survive. I imagine my future often, surrounded by the type of people that you would find in these shows. People who encourage forgiveness, who don’t lash out, and never act in hate. I strive to be like these people. I strive to be something and somewhere different than where I currently am. 

In private, I cry when the show ends because it feels like I am being left, a feeling that I am accustomed to. But the endings always fade from my memory, and the show lives on in my mind. I sometimes catch myself wondering how the characters are doing or what they are up to. I’m not sure if I realize at the time that this isn’t normal. Sometimes, though, the shows don’t bring me any comfort, and I’m reminded about what I don’t have. I watch episodes with loving fathers and mothers, funny extended family, and annoying, but lovable neighbors. I have nothing and no one. I am reminded that when I am older, these relationships will still be missing. I will not partake in these relatable experiences; I am yearning so deeply for something that will never come. 

Years after 2005, as I get older and am grown, sometimes the pain will ping from within. I rationalize my way out of the feeling by remembering all that I have, which is plentiful, and yet…. I think of the memories of laying in bed, wishing so deeply that I would wake up with people who loved me, people who were there. In my fantasies, my house is different, the carpet is white and plush, the hall light is soft and safe as I drift off to sleep, my mother, someone different than whom I knew, smiles in on me, and my father is somewhere on the first floor reading a newspaper. But that isn’t my reality, and my memory still invades my dreams at night, rotting my sleep and preventing me from escaping. I dream of those houses of my past, cold, dark, and empty, but they’ve turned into mazes that I can’t figure out. Someone is chasing me, someone that I can’t make out, and when I’m caught, the nightmare starts again. So, in a way, I still live in those bubbles of existence, a prisoner to my past. 

I stay in-between and I put on my shows. Re-runs of what raised me and kept me company for so many years. I surround myself by those who know me, by those who understand me, and I feel so conflicted for thinking so. My shows allow me to live out a life that I yearned and deserved. I have my parents and siblings; my world is small and safe. It’s 2026, and I lay curled up in my bed, under a linen quilt, eyes glued to my tv on top of my dresser. I laugh along with the laugh track as the clock ticks past 5:42 pm, and I continue to minimize the gaps in my life where people should be.