In a half dream, I feel like my whole life is a series of previews playing out on a television screen. Each activity, moment, challenge, and story a stereotype of production and expectation. I’m watching the previews with detachment, sitting alone on the couch, and then I imagine my partner coming into the scene, with a bowl of snacks, cuddling up on the couch, and the feature presentation beginning.

It’s comforting that at that point, the past becomes as irrelevant as those barely registering previews.

It was a moment of half-conscious clarity that this all came to me, but I felt it was worth writing down because it felt so fitting, and unsettling, and telling / revealing, as a way I might perceive my own life.