(LOOP)The TV Contol-ER

It doesn’t feel like control when it starts. You sit down after a long day and turn something on just to unwind. One episode plays, and before it ends the next one starts automatically. You tell yourself you’ll stop after this one, but the pause between shows is so short that you never really make a decision. It just keeps going. At some point, hours have passed and you don’t even remember what you watched first. Your body is still on the couch, but your mind hasn’t rested. It’s been jumping from scene to scene, sound to sound. Loud music, bright colors, news alerts, laughter tracks. Even when the room is quiet, something about the screen keeps your chest slightly tight. You don’t notice it right away, but your breathing is different. Faster. Shallow. It’s strange to think about how early it starts. Saturday morning cartoons felt harmless. You’d sit there for hours without realizing it. Then it became music videos, reality shows, late-night reruns. The rhythm stayed the same. Fast cuts. Constant noise. Something always happening. You grow up inside that pattern. Now it’s streaming instead of cable, but nothing really changed. The shows roll into each other. The suggestions line up before you even search. There’s always another episode waiting, and it feels easier to keep watching than to sit in silence. We even call the thing in our hands a controller, like we’re the ones deciding everything. The word “control” is right there in it. But most nights it doesn’t feel like control. It feels automatic. Like the screen is setting the pace and we’re just keeping up with it. We tell ourselves we’re relaxing, but sometimes it feels more like we’re avoiding the quiet. The silence feels heavier than the noise, so we let the loop keep running. And the longer it runs, the harder it feels to turn it off. Not because we can’t. But because we’re used to it controlling the rhythm of the room. There are moments when I can feel my mind beginning to circle something, and I already know what is about to happen. It usually starts with something small ,a sentence I wish I had said differently, a look I misread, a mistake that most people would forget within minutes. But my mind doesn’t forget. It rewinds. I replay the moment once, trying to understand it. Then again, trying to fix it. Then again, trying to protect myself from it happening in the future. Before I realize it, the memory is no longer just a memory. It becomes a space I am standing inside. The room around me fades and the thought grows walls. The loop is seamless. There is no clear beginning and no clear end. It just circles back into itself, tightening each time. What was once uncertainty slowly reshapes itself into something heavier , a story about who I am, what I lack, what I might lose. The fear becomes detailed. The doubt gains texture. My body reacts as if the imagined outcome has already arrived. My chest tightens. My breathing changes. My confidence shifts. I hesitate in ways that feel rational but are rooted in something that hasn’t actually happened. That is the strangest part. Nothing is happening in the present moment, yet my nervous system is responding to a future that only exists inside repetition. Anxiety projects possibilities so vividly that they begin to feel like memories. The loop doesn’t scream; it whispers, and because it whispers, I listen more closely. Over time, the repetition becomes familiar. The fear starts to feel grounded, almost logical. I begin, when I stop feeding it, it does not explode or collapse dramatically. It simply quiets. The thought may return tomorrow, or next week, or in another form entirely. But I am beginning to understand that I do not have to live inside every echo my mind creates. I can hear it without entering it. I can notice it without building walls around it. The loop may be perfect. But I am not required to stay inside it.adjusting my decisions around it. I hold back. I shrink. I move carefully. The loop convinces me that it is protecting me, when in reality it is keeping me in place. The more I replay it, the more real it feels. But somewhere between the fourth replay and the fiftieth, there is a subtle shift. I begin to notice that the moment itself has not changed. Only my reaction to it has grown. The loop is powered by attention. It survives because I keep stepping back into it. “We hold the remote in our hands, but somewhere along the way it started holding us.” AKA Chambo (Digital Artwork)2024-2026