The Pause Button as Coping Mechanism

May twenty-first. I want to be honest about what I did last night. I sat on the floor, not the couch, the floor, for reasons that felt structural at the time, and watched the Game of Thrones season six premiere, and I paused it. Twice. Not to get water. Just to sit with what had happened and give my nervous system a moment to recalibrate.

This is the part where I should probably say I'm not usually like this about television. But that would be a lie. I have been like this about television since approximately 2011, when I discovered that I watch things the way some people read, leaning in, taking it personally, resenting the episode for ending. The show has been doing something to people's Saturday nights for years now and I am not immune. The throw blanket ended up on the floor. The tea went cold. I have no regrets.

What I do find funny, in retrospect, is that I took a photo. Not of the screen, my apartment, myself, the mug, the remote. As if I needed documentation that this was a real event that happened to a real person.

the pause-and-process stance

The coffee table looked like evidence. Paperback I haven't opened in three days, tea I made at nine and forgot about, the remote angled at approximately forty degrees like I put it down in a hurry, which I did.

It was a good night, is the thing. The bouldering muscles from last Saturday are still reminding me they exist every time I reach for something overhead, and there's something oddly satisfying about spending the following Saturday sitting very still on the floor. The windowsill caught the lamp light the way it does in late spring, and the five things on it were all exactly where they belonged, and the show was enormous and a little devastating, and I paused it twice, and that was the whole evening.

the ingredients of a night in