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Near third grade, my mother cancelled cable, and it ruined my summer. A forced detox from camping out in front of that gridded light box for hours on end left me stirring. To this day, my brother will bring it up to mock me, and I get red at every mention. 

For spending hours watching cartoons, I remember nothing of them. My memory retains only the intensely hot feeling of having been denied access. That, and the replacing habit of whipping my bumblebee inspired tricycle around the neighborhood begrudgingly.

Just days ago, I found the most still feeling. The feeling where each of your cells tingle because you’re conscious for the reality of your body colliding in real time with the air particles around you. I decided to use the escalator — not walk up the machine to make my commute to the next floor faster but to stop, step on, and ride the damn thing like it’s instructions detail. I got physically uncomfortable after ten seconds. Standing still is something I have to ironically train myself to accomplish. As of late, I find my attention span has dipped into the lowest it’s been in years. For a million fucking reasons, I find myself processing the world with undulating patience. 

At its crest, I can be a proper listener. I can feel equipped to see a friend or meet a stranger in conversation. The spark of capability and self compassion ignite the same candle with joyful ease. Near the trough, I threaten to leave everything. Coined as Spain Days by me, these are the hours I cry out for a full release of my reality to escape to Spain indefinitely. The lungs hung in my chest constrict and assets morph to obligations. My arm extends stiffly to all my loved ones, and I bolt to be alone in a foreign space where there is nothing but my own hokey iteration of Eat Pray Love. Spanning between the extremes is a place where I probably tell the people I love the most too much about how I feel; I hurt them and myself, consequently. Dragging myself through the damn trench I dug usually looks like relapsing into collecting data on what a better life looks like. After continuous scrolls of the blue light my phone so eagerly emits, I likely delete everything deemed unessential on the tool and attempt a tangible hobby. My attempts at rehabilitating my attention span are intensely isolating, and I forcefully brawl with impatience to slow my sickened stomach. Maybe the pressure I induce folds me over to meet another Spain Day. Perhaps I relapse to summer circa second grade where Fairly Odd Parents runs on repeat two inches from my slack jawed face. Either way, there are no wider hips and milk dried tits to cut me off cold turkey prior to needing eyedrops for the slits in my face that haven’t blinked in two hours.