There is a specific kind of brainrot someone who has been watching TV since the crib accumulates. I narrate everything in my head, from my breakup to my car accident feeling like major plot points, mid-season cliffhanger events to keep viewers watching (picture me sobbing in a restaurant, now picture my head jolting forward as I listen to Feminominon and get a little too into it, not realizing the car in front of me has stopped.)
Everything is consumable if you try hard enough. I am putting my makeup on in the mirror while having a breakdown, I am hooking up with my ex to further the plot (picture a curvy redhead and a petite blonde with enormous tits. You’re welcome.)
I grew up evangelical, I was told when I die everything I’ve ever done – my whole life, will exist up on a screen for Jesus and my parents to view. To see if I’m worthy, if I am allowed into heaven. I thought about this often, about every moment being seen by the world post-death, this one random but frequent evil thought broadcast to millions. That, coupled with the copious amount of media I consumed, made me think my life was a TV show.
I don’t have main character syndrome I am recovering from religious trauma. I don’t have religious trauma I am a recovering narcissist. See, the difference between me and all the other hasbeens is that I know I’m not the only one. Everyone’s life is a movie, a story I can’t look away from. I know I’m not the only one, so don’t rush to assume I’m soooooo self-obsessed.
I listen to music with the knowledge that what I like will be plastered all over my Instagram story later in the year, my taste profile working as a simulacrum for who I am as a person: a time traveler, taste-maker, yearner (picture the gayest Spotify Wrapped you can imagine then add more boygenius.) I am endlessly curating myself with the predetermined knowledge of someone writing a play, creating a character. I want to be empathetic, terrifying, too intimidating to approach in real life and so goddamn tortured. “Color my life with the chaos of trouble” I don’t listen to Belle and Sebastian I got that from 500 Days of Summer (picture me watching that movie and relating to both lead characters simultaneously.)
I go to the club alone and sit under the neon lights and glittering disco ball twirling above my head and feel like time is moving in slow motion. I am adorned in monochromatic pink frills dancing surreptitiously (did you have to google that word? Imagine me pointing and laughing at you with my fingers crossed behind my back.) I am the youngest I will ever be and oh look it’s gone. I am liquid smooth, come pick me before its too late (picture me listening to Mitski in my car screaming that lyric.)
When you live your life with the voice in your head constantly narrating like you’re the doomed-by-the-narrative protagonist of some great epic, your actions become inflated and every decision you make a fateful choice that could move the plot either forward or backward, and you never know which direction is which. How do I remove myself from the narrative? How do I put myself not in a TV show or movie or documentary but a story no one is watching?
Everything feels so final nowadays. I am avoiding AI art on Pinterest and blocking Elon Musk on X. I am listening to Hasan Piker on Twitch and simultaneously ordering dandruff shampoo on Amazon. Look at me participate in capitalism, watch me dance like a jester in a cage for the richest man in the world.
I am thinking about making a community garden and buying a gun. I will do whichever is easier and cheaper, so we all know what that is (imagine me at the Walmart gun store, they will not turn me away when I ask for something small and cheap. They will bring out an AK47 and ask how many bullets I need – I don’t know I’ve never been to a gun store.)
I am going on a side quest to the grocery store with my noise-canceling headphones on to make the whole thing feel more significant (picture me walking up and down the aisle at Winco panicking because I can’t find the right kind of pesto while The Cranberries plays cinematically in the background.)
I am pacing in a small white room filled with pictures of naked women and plants, I am laying in the fetal position while staring at the place where the wall meets the ceiling and the paint job shows its conspicuously bad hand. I am writing this at a bar that doubles as a meeting point for communists, up in a dark blue room with Victorian crown molding on the ceiling and a big brown round table I am not using, opting for my lap instead.
I am deeply self-aware, beyond meta. Something so Cronenberg-esque you turn away in disgust (imagine the monster at the end of The Substance then add red curly hair.) I am putting up my hair into a messy bun as I sigh dramatically, my breasts bouncing boobily. I am all you ever wanted and everything you can never become – the silhouette of a ballerina dancing in your childhood music box, see how the paint by my smile is chipping? Listen to how the song is slowing down now, becoming more despondent, discordant, sycophantic. Slam the lid shut, quickly, before I escape. I am the reflection you see in a two way mirror, I am condensation from a cold glass making a ring on your lovely new coffee table. Antique teak wood, you say? I can’t wait to ruin it. Watch me spin underneath the neon lights, watch my perspective in a fish eye lens as it falls toward the ground.