Lying Awake Intent On Tuning In On You...

I think I was a happier person when I didn't have television.
People on television never go to work. But when they do, the work is interesting and enviable . They hang out at record stores all day with bosses who give them prom dresses.  They are paleontologists and columnists and club DJs. Television will make you believe that if you stare longingly out a bus window long enough, your whole situation will change.  That people actually throw surprise parties. That people celebrate promotions, and get soup when they are sick. Television makes you believe in breakfast in bed with flower buds in tiny vases and orange juice.  Lazy Sundays with newspapers and well behaved dogs.
Television has made me think it's possible for people to see me in slow motion, on the other side of a Vaseline filter. Television says I should have a lot of wide set square teeth.  That there is that one perfect dress out there, and everyone I've ever known will be there cheering me on when I find it. TV lets me know that it's OK to be fat now.  But not OK to be scarred or dimpled. Television says it's OK to be old-ish, but only if I am talking about grey coverage or wrinkle cream.
I don't fall for this in social media.  Everyone is so shiny and happy and traveling the world. And trying hard to convince me of this.  But I actually know these people.  I know they are unemployed, that they don't like their wives that much, that they didn't want that baby.  I've seen their whole bodies, stooping and sitting, without the smoke and mirrors of effects and angles.
I don't fall for this in magazines.  The magic in magazines is flat, one dimensional.  There are no feelings, no hips, no opinions on the paper.  This is surface and shine.  More times than not this is art, not life. There is nothing to see here.
But television is always showing me people I don't know doing things that could probably happen. But only because I don't know them. Television tells me who I should know, what I should have, how I should get it, what it should look like. Drilling me with equal parts vapid dribble and an endless barrage of rape and murder. Blaring and blinding and blending in with the furniture.
Making me question what looks back at me in the mirror.  Making me afraid of my own shadow. Making me believe in magic.