I sit on my couch, the soft glow emanating from the TV as some show plays on silent because this is the only way I ever could go to sleep my whole life. I always felt comfortable like this. Darkness in every corner of the room as the center is illuminated by billions of little light waves filling my vision. Ever since I was a child this has given me comfort in the middle of the night when I would awake from nightmares created by the darkest recesses of my already dismal mental state.

            I was diagnosed with depression at a very early age. Though I was a very gifted child, excelling in math and sciences, I constantly questioned my purpose and tried to reason why my existence would benefit anyone. I remember, when I was five years old, I asked my father a question that coming from a person at any age would disconcert parents, “would you and mommy be better off without me here?” Dad hugged me tight and told me that I was the best thing that ever happened to them. I gave him a wan smile, but I was still filled with doubt and mistrust. He was my dad, he had to say that.

            I have a sister as well, Tina. She was the outgoing one with all of the friends, the overall good grades, and was definitely on the path to self-actualization whereas I was on the path towards self-destruction. There was a significant age gap between us and a distinct separation in how we acted and even the way we looked. As we grew people were surprised when we told them we were siblings because of the lack of similarity in our physical as well as personal appearances. She was the one who left the east coast and found out what she wanted to do with her life, a sommelier in California, while I sat there and floundered trying to figure out if I was going to be a writer or just go the normal path of any millennial and work in a start-up and hope to grow with the company.

            There was a void within me; a black hole forever sucking more sustenance into its ever-growing vacuum contained within my body. I tried making friends, baseball, I even had a pre-school girlfriend. Nothing made a difference, nothing made me feel as every other child felt – accepted. It was not easy to me to feel so separated from every other child running around, socializing with other kids, and excited to be introduced to new experiences. This black abyss, I could feel it tearing at my insides, collecting every shred of any satisfaction I could ever hope to achieve into its mounting event horizon only to feed the daunting abyss which plagued my soul through each moment of the day.

            It was at the age of five that my parents bought me my first TV, a Toshiba 32” model CZ32V51 CRT Color TV with a remote control. I remember it was Hanukah and on the first night they presented me with this bulky box of which I was clueless of the contents which were contained within. I tore open the blue and white dreidel gift wrap, throwing it at my dad in a fit of pure excitement, which I’m sure my family was happy to see, and as I read the thick black letters on the immense cardboard box which lumbered before me I could feel myself rise to a fever pitch, euphoria.

            Dad opened the box and lifted the TV up as I gazed upon it, awestruck by this source of entertainment that was now under my supervision. It was black, utilizing the soon to be outdated Cathode Ray Tube, but I didn’t know anything about new technologies back then. He placed it on the ground with a groan, he was 44 years old, so lifting was getting more difficult for him. I carefully, so as not to disturb this object of beauty which sat unperturbed, walked around the TV surveying every indent, every line, the shine that reflected from the curved screen, the buttons which gleamed with purity in their untainted manner. After my assessment was complete the there was only one word I could have used to describe the machine: immaculate. I then knelt down to face the screen, the magnificent screen which would open up worlds I never thought imaginable, and I saw myself staring back at me. My parents tell me that I just sat there looking at myself for almost ten minutes. It was not myself I was staring at though; it was the me on the other side of that screen. The me filled with hope.

            Within the week I had cable hooked up in my room with access to almost 60 channels, which was an absurd amount in the late 90’s. My daily routine was changed after the addition of the TV to my room. I would wake up, my TV already on Nickelodeon because I would fall asleep to the Nick at Night shows which I wouldn’t have grown to enjoy until years later. Rugrats was the show which I would awake to before I would have to go to school. Watching those little babies scheming and maneuvering their way around adult supervision so that they could go on fun little adventures that most babies would not have the opportunity to undertake in real life. Phil was my favorite because he was the baby that was willing to do anything like eat worms and roll around in mud.

            At school all of the kids would be talking about the new TV shows. My friends, the people who put up with my morose demeanor, always raved about the new episode of Pokémon. One of my friends, Ned, would always brag about how he could guess every “Who’s that Pokémon?” correct. Being five years old, living in an affluent community, we made everything into a competition. I loved the debates we’d have over what Pokémon Ash would catch in the next episode and who that Pokémon was in the first episode which flew over the rainbow, which – spoiler alert – we would later find out to be Ho-oh, the legendary from Gold, Silver, and Crystal.

            Having the TV in my room, a world on the other side of it, really brought me out of my shell. There was a rapid shift in the way I acted. The psychiatrist that I saw noticed that I had changed. I overheard him saying that for some reason the depression seemed to subside and that it was anomalous for it to happen in such a short amount of time. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time, but I now know why it is such an anomaly. My TV had some power over me.

            I would get picked up after school by Mom to be brought back home. I would grab a snack, usually some piece of fruit that my mom would give me, and all internal doubts and fears would be quelled when my gaze fell upon the screen. It was a ritual of mine, before turning on the tube, to stare into the screen and smile at the person who stared back at me. Though the person on the other side looked like me I had a sense that it was not the me whose body I inhabited. I tried to show it to my parents and they were happy to indulge me, but I knew that they could not see what I saw. They would laugh, kiss me on the forehead and return to doing their adult things.

            Legends of the Hidden Temple, Double Dare, Rocko’s Modern Life were the shows that I would be greeted by when I walked into the solace of my home. I grew with Spongebob, Animaniacs, and Freakazoid. I always wanted a dog, but my parents did not want to get one for me because they knew the responsibility would fall upon them to take care of it, so I had Wishbone. These shows became an active part of my life, reinvigorating me and filling me with hope and passion. My parents were happy, my sister was happy, and I was happy. The doubts and fears subsided the more my relationship grew with the TV. As my relationship with my TV grew deeper, my life flourished outwardly as well. In school, with friends, in sports I became an active member of my life. There were no more questions about my place in the universe because I knew that I did have a purpose.

            I underwent different psychological tests over the years and the researchers were confounded. Being diagnosed with early childhood depression most children needed to be put on meds to counteract the chemical imbalances. After a year I had shown a complete turnaround in my behavior. The chemical imbalances weren’t present, and it seemed that everything had righted itself, which was something that was extraordinarily rare in such a short amount of time. They couldn’t figure it out. When I said it was the TV they didn’t buy it. They chalked my explanation up to childhood fancies and imagination, but I wouldn’t let their skepticism shake my belief in the interstitial spaces beyond their comprehension of physical data and analyses. That’s just what scientific minds do though. They need some sort of clarification grounded in fact. They need to have statistics before them and that is what they believe.

            Only I knew about the worlds that lay beyond the screen which curved into infinitely expansive pixelated universes of lineation and vibrant colors. I knew what lay beyond the tube but no one else could see what I saw or experience what I experienced. This understanding of something that no one else could comprehend gave me not a feeling of separation, but a feeling of accomplishment. Within a year I was more comfortable with who I was than most of the other children in my class and this continued throughout elementary school. My parents would even catch me talking to my TV. They believed I had gone through some mysterious psychotic break, which they tried to reason with the psychologists as the cause for my sudden change of character, but as many tests as the doctors did they could not seem to pinpoint any malfunction on my psychological makeup.

            These frequent conversations with the me on the other side of the screen were enlightening. He always relieved me of my doubts and fears, letting me know that everything works out as it should. He was my best friend. He helped me when it came to my love life, giving advice and enabling me to believe that I was worth it and that I was good enough. That was how I got Bella Santos, my fifth-grade crush, to kiss me and date soon after that. He helped me with school, showing me that I was capable of figuring out solutions through my abstract way of thinking, just like him. He helped me with my parents. If I had a problem with them we came up with ways to solve it together, so I could approach my parents in a civil manner and to amend my behavior and our relationship as a whole. Because of him, everything in my life was going great.

            I graduated elementary school, which ended in sixth grade unlike many other schools which ended in fourth grade and then fifth through eighth was considered middle school. That concept always confounded me. I didn’t really understand why they should have a middle school to separate from high school. Anyway, my sister left for college at the end of that summer. It was an expensive upstate school, where she would eventually get some useless degree in a field that she didn’t realize had no use in the modern world. It was emotional to see her go. No matter how distant we were in age and relation, she was still my sister and I was still going to miss having her around the house. We parted ways and, with my head held high knowing that I would still be ok, I jumped in the car ready to start my transition into the 7th grade – high school.

            It was raining as we drove down I-87, cars splashing torrents of rain over the windows, distorting my father’s vision through the windshield for a few seconds. Greyish-white clouds loomed overhead which bred this lashing rain which resonated through my core like tiny gongs being banged all over the car. I stared out of the window, watching a water-color collage of cars crashing through a lake of cascading currents careening in the opposite direction. So suddenly I heard the screeching of tires and before I could even look at the car, which crashed into the passenger side of the car where my mother sat breeding the sound of a sickening crunch that was a combination of bending metal and crepitus, I felt our car heave to the left into the guard rail with sparks flying from the front left bumper before the entire mobile lurch upwards when I hit my head on the back of my father’s head rest, knocking me out.

            I awoke presumably a few minutes later, though it could have been longer. I was upside down, my arms hanging over my head, my seatbelt digging into my waist and chest, and a piercing ringing in my ears. I looked forward to see my parents in the same position. I called out to them which elicited no response. I moved a little bit, but a sharp pain seared through my left leg. I lifted my head to inspect where the pain was coming from and I could see, on my ankle, bone had torn through my skin and blood coursed down my leg, pulsing as if my heart were pushing blood right out of me through its beats, subtly telling me what it wanted. As I felt myself drift into unconsciousness, numbness overcoming all of my senses, I identified one feeling in particular through my slowly deadening mental state – doom.

            The funeral was two days later. Tina and I were placed under the care of our God-parents, the Heffmans, who had a daughter my age, Cheryl, and a son Tina’s age, Henry. As I walked up to watch both of my parents getting buried in adjacent grave, after having witnessed the car accident which severed my mother’s legs and crushed my father’s skull and me only walking away with a broken bone in my leg, I felt every eye upon me, pitying me, crying and pretending to understand what I was going through. No one knew what I had lost because I felt inside of me that something more than my parents had been taken from me in that car accident. I had lost myself.

            That night, after moving some of my clothes and most important possessions into the furnished wood and unpleasant brown carpet basement of the Heffmans’ house, including my TV, I curled up into a ball on the worn, grey cushioned couch, a warm checkered quilt draped over me to try and counteract the coldness which rippled through my entire being. After trying to warm up, to no avail, I stood, grabbing my crutches, and hobbled towards the TV. I stopped right in front of it, staring deep into the curved screen hoping to see the me on the other side. As I stared, looking at the me which existed in the body I inhabited, I realized that the me on the other side was not going to show up. I slunk back onto the couch, allowing myself to go down face first into a fit of tears until I fell asleep.

            I awoke, blurry eyed and tears caked in the crusted corners of my eyes. I could still hear people chatting upstairs meaning that the Shiva was still going on and people were still mourning the loss of my parents. I saw, through the distorted vision which gave rise to floaters and a quick migraine, a soft glow emanating from my TV. From where I was sitting it looked like one of those old black and white Nick at Nite shows. I searched for the remote, running my hand along the almost grainy feel of the couch to no avail. The remote was gone and I didn’t want to go rummaging through the couch to find it. I stood up, grabbed my crutches, and wrapped the checkered quilt around my shoulders, knowing that it would not bring me warmth because that coldness I felt was deeper than what lay upon my surface. As I tottered towards the TV with only the intention of ceasing whatever life that TV had left in it, just as I wished for my own, I could feel that with each push upon those crutches my strength was diminishing; my muscles withered away which each strenuous demand upon my body.

            I faced the TV, nauseous and straining with every fiber of my being to stand upright, as I looked to see what lay beyond the screen. The soft glow hurt my eyes and as much as I wanted to state that as the reason for my immediate break down into tears I could not. I saw Mom, downtrodden and gray, with tears falling from her cheeks, sitting on a chair as people surrounded her. She was bruised, with bandages on her neck, down her legs, and her arm in a sling. I could not hear anything, only watch in terror and melancholy. As she sat there, ignoring the crowd, eyes cast down to the floral-patterned rug of our living room in the old house, I felt my gut jerk as tears poured out of my eyes and my breathing became short and choked. As my sadness rose I watched the torrent of tears that fell from my mother’s eyes as she fell to her knees, pressing her face into the rug as her body shook with choked and rapid breaths.

            I pressed my hands against the glass, feeling the dancing static tickle my palms like a fresh paintbrush softly making its way across canvas. I wanted nothing more than to reach out and put my arms around her, but I was blocked by that screen which curved ad infinitum. I stared to see Dad, hobbling with his crutches, a large patch over the top side of his head over his left eye, kneel to the ground and gently place his arms around her. While this slowed Mom’s breathing as she wrapped her arms around Dad’s shoulders, pressing her face into his neck, I saw the look on his face. Broken and defeated he stared beyond Mom’s shoulders towards the wall, fighting back the tears and the scream which welled in his throat. A mixture of anger, fear, and gloom were all present upon his face. Everyone gave them room, but they also had tears collecting in the corners of their eyes.

            Then I saw the pictures – my pictures. There was the one that was my parent’s favorite, when I was about two or three years old with a curly mop atop my pumpkin head, with shining eyes and baby teeth scattered throughout the ear-to-ear smile that was plastered across my face. The other one was a current one of me with darker hair that was combed back to show my face wearing a baseball uniform with a bat slung over my shoulder and a look of contentedness that made my eyes shine. Tina stood in front of them. I couldn’t see her face, but I saw her shoulders rising and falling as she pressed her face into her hands. Henry stood next to her with his arm wrapped around her innocently hoping to console her in the only way he knew how.

            It was when my eyes were ensnared by those pictures that I understood what had happened. That numbness, the feeling of emptiness, the sensation that I had not felt since before I had gotten that TV on that beautiful Hanukkah night that will forever remain in the forefront of my memory so as to preserve Mom, Dad, and Tina and to keep them with me forever. Me – the me on the other side of that screen – was dead. I could only infer by what I had gone through and by the wounded appearance of Mom and Dad that it was a very similar experience to what I had incurred. I watched, mouth agape, bewildered, and incredulous, not being able to wrap my head around what was unfolding before my eyes. In that moment I could only think about how it should’ve been me and not him. He was the better one. He was the one who made me better. Why did I have to live? I began to pound against the glass, wishing that it would catch their attention on the other side. I screamed a guttural yell that resonated through the house and smashed my fists with even greater force against this screen which had, at one point, yielded such promise and such a greater reward than I ever could have hoped. They did not move from their embracive position; they continued with their grieving as any parent would do if they had lost their child.

            My cries and screams caught the attention of the mourners upstairs. I did not hear them come down as my focus was solely placed on the scene of horror that was playing out, but suddenly I felt Tina place her arms around me. She held me tight as if she were saying goodbye to me for a very long time. I hugged her back and my guard melted away instantly followed by a flood of tears which fell from my eyes. I could hear her quiet sobs as well. After a moment of this I told Tina to look at the TV. We both turned our eyes towards the screen which had given me life for so many years and were greeted with the sight of blackness. The TV was off. She hugged me again, chalking my odd behavior up to the grieving. I knew that I never imagined any of what I saw. I couldn’t explain any of what it was, but I knew it was real.

Tina left to go back to college soon after, beginning her path to world traveler and eventually settling down after figuring out what her passion truly was: wine. With the miles between us, naturally we grew apart. We shared the occasional call and pleasantries, but we did not have the relationship that a loving brother and sister were supposed to have. We were merely acquaintances. We were people who had been through a traumatic incident and tried to make things work, but I made it hard for her because of who I was.

 The Heffmans, giving me a home and everything I could ask for, while having to put up with my surmounting depression, left town after Cheryl and I graduated due to the high costs of living in such an affluent suburban town. Using the settlement from my parent’s life insurance to put me through college, which was upstate near where my sister went to school years ago. I also moved out finding an apartment a couple of minutes away from campus. It was small, cramped, and dusty, but I found it at a cheap price, so I figured it wouldn’t take too much out of what my parents left for me. Another good thing about that apartment was that it was right above a bar. The bartender let me stay there and he would also give me free drinks which saved me quite a bit of money on my dwindling funds.

            Upon leaving town and moving into the new apartment I rid myself of the old TV. I had enough of it because no matter how much I searched I never was going to find that other me ever again. Though I didn’t want to give up my search I knew that I was a doomed case and that I would never get back to where I was. My depression continued to amount, and thoughts of suicide became an increasingly desirable respite as each day passed. That black hole, which had been suppressed for so many years, had returned with a vengeance. I could feel it pulling at my soul, tearing at me with a gradually increasing intensity, destroying hope and with it all of my dreams and aspirations. I didn’t know what I wanted to do anymore.

            One hope remained: the hope that I could possibly witness another me. I came up with a theory that the me that I saw on the other side of that screen was not the only me out there. Through the next TV I searched for him, channel-by-channel, which was well over 500, forcing me to sit in front of the TV and absorb witless information for hours, even days on end. With each subsequent year I would set the TV which I owned aside to make room for a new one, constantly looking for myself within the screens which no longer curved into infinity but were flat and monotonous.

            Recently I had bought a bunch of CRT’s and stared into them as I had when I was a boy. Each of these attempts were fruitless. I found nothing. I felt nothing. That was my last attempt because I figured if I could not find another one of me in all the attempts I had made already there was nothing that I could do. I was empty, and I would never get back to where I was. I think back to the day when I found out he was gone and ponder about how I should have been the one to go. I can still remember how Mom looked, perched upon her knees with Dad’s arms wrapped around her as she sobbed uncontrollably.

            I’m supposed to graduate after this semester, but I don’t know if I’m going to make it that far. I guess that’s why I’m writing this out. As I finish off the last of this bottle of Jack, the revolver resting so comfortably, beckoning for me to grasp it firmly, on my desk, I know now that I can do whatever I set my mind to. After years of not really making any correct decisions without the aid of the other me, I figure that perhaps I can do something right on my own for once. Maybe I can help another me by what I am about to do. Tina, I love you so much and I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. You deserved better. Mom, Dad… I’ll see you soon. Maybe I’ll see me up there too… of that I can only hope.