Member-only story
My Life Is Not the Sitcom I’d Hoped It Would Be
I used to compare my life to sitcoms as a way of making sense of everything. Sitcoms had structure, narratives, a set of rules they had to follow; life didn’t play by the same rules.
When I was a kid, I had trouble sleeping. Nightmares plagued me. I lived in a second-floor bedroom — a converted attic space — at the top of the stairs. It was linked to our “computer room” by a doorway lacking a door, around the corner from which was a long closet.
The left end of the room housed our computer desk and monitor. On the right was a spare mattress and boxspring, adorned with a tacky floral comforter and sheets that must have belonged to my grandmother once upon a time.
I used to lie awake in a fetal position, ready to spring from beneath the covers and bound down the stairs two, three at a time at the first indication of the paranormal, supernatural, or extraterrestrial. I thought a girl with long black hair and a white dress would rise from beneath the comforter, or that I would hear the slow creak of the closet door opening, or that a bright beam of light would carry aliens into the room, ready to abduct me.
