How Selling Sunset is better than meditation

Or how I navigate anxiety with regular doses of reality TV

It started when I was in my twenties. There was a show on MTV which was called ‘The Real World.’ I was living in Amsterdam, and was making a living from cleaning peoples’ houses, and writing lyrics for dance music. I lived in a small, depressing flat, up three flights of tiny wooden stairs, with my Dutch boyfriend. There was an octopus-like brown stain on the wall where we used to throw spaghetti to see if it was cooked or not. We had a budgie called Bobby who shat all over the place and disappeared one day as someone had forgotten to close the window.

I was often alone as my boyfriend worked in a music studio. I didn’t like my own company. I still struggle with my own company. I find it is when I am alone that I tend to overthink, remember sad things, tell myself off for some personal misdemeanour (these change daily). I need structure. I possibly should have joined the army but I have low physical stamina and people would have laughed at me if I’d have tried to fight them in arm to arm combat. Instead in this strange holding bay of a place, I tried to construct a routine. In the evenings, I made dinner and watched eighties movies hired from the local video rental place. In the morning I washed clothes in the shower vacuumed the carpet which was covered in budgie poo and watched ‘The Real World.’

I also smoked a lot of cigarettes. I sometimes lit one cigarette straight off the back of another one. I imagined I was going to be discovered very soon and would become famous for something important. I wasn’t beautiful but in the right light I could look okay. I had thick hair. I would perhaps become a face model- someone who was purely used for hair brands and the photographer would avoid taking photos of my legs because they looked like they belonged to a wrestler.

‘The Real World,’ followed the lives of a group of young people living in New York. They were all good looking (if I remember right), and they filmed their entire bodies and not just their faces. It looked like real life but better and there was definitely nobody cleaning up budgie poo or dealing with a boyfriend who was never home. The camera followed them whilst they argued, made up, argued, made up, fell in love, fell out of love. It was like mashed potato for my sad brain. Like a warm bath when you have spent too long on your phone. This was in fact what you did before phones - you spent huge amounts of time staring and thinking. I miss this sometimes.

It also felt rebellious, watching this kind of reality TV, as it was the kind of programming my dad despised (and aren’t our twenties often about trying to push back against our parents only to discover they were right?) Little did he know that I would spend a large portion of my adult life watching this stuff.

It felt like I was hanging out with this group of attractive, successful people without having to leave the house. It felt easy and without the complications of real life where you realised you’d had spittle in the corner of your mouth the whole time you’d been talking. There was drama and discord but it wasn’t mine. I didn’t own it and I wasn’t responsible. It was like watching ants running around the pavement. It didn’t require any interventions. It didn’t require much thought.

This mindless TV. The TV that looks better than real life is good for me.

‘What’s this shit?’ my partner says coming in after he’s finished work to find me glued to the latest season of ‘Selling Sunset,’ cramming in a half hour ‘fix’ before I head off on the school run (a show about very attractive estate agents selling properties in Malibu and Beverley Hills).

‘Cushelle is pissed off because she had a Emma and Mary is ignoring what’s happening because she doesn’t like conflict,’ I reply.

He sighs in disgust and walks off. I sometimes pretend I’ve been watching something else but we’ve been together for over twenty years now and I can’t be bothered to hide my poor taste anymore. I slouch back on the sofa, and my eyeballs suck in all the details of another million dollar mansion (all of them exactly the same).

‘This place is awesome. Imagine the parties you could have here,’ Cushelle says, her vertiginous shoes giving her some difficulties as she walks around the infinity pool. There’s also a kitchen island covered in Italian marble, the gym with running and rowing machines, the garage as big as most houses, another infinity pool for the kids, the cinema room, the sauna for the dog. I watch Cushelle as she lowers herself into a perfectly white garden chair. She is definitely the most beautiful. Her teeth like tiny primary school teeth- square, shiny and perfect.

I am more relaxed than after a yoga class (I don’t actually go to yoga class but if I did). My tongue hangs out like a sedated dog. My eyelids are half shut, and my hands rest in my lap as another property comes into shot and the mini bald guy who heads up the agency with his twin brother, complains about how his penthouse apartment block isn’t going to be finished in time and the floor doesn’t look as good as he’d hoped.

I switch the TV off and grab two packets of crisps from the cupboard, fill up a bottle of water and head out for the school run. For a bit it takes me a while to acclimatise as my eyes have gotten used to seeing only million dollar mansions and women with flawless skin and tiny bodies. This life looks crumpled and sad, and I can feel myself emerging from my reality TV trance. I don’t feel envious when I watch this or ‘Housewives of Beverley Hills,’ or ‘Vanderpump Rules,’ or ‘Below Deck,’ or ‘Love is Blind’. I know it isn’t real. I love them because they switch my brain off. They are possibly the only thing that switches my brain off.

The more tricky life is, the more I feel the need to immerse myself in this fake world. If I can’t sleep, I pad downstairs, pour myself a glass of milk, and resume where I left off. I am back in Amsterdam in my twenties, unsure what the hell is happening to me and why I have fled my exams to live with this older man. I am struggling through IVF and don’t want to think about what to do if it doesn’t work. I have lost my father and the memories I was trying to run away from in my twenties are coming back.

The soundtrack starts (always a song about winning/success/nailing it all). My pulse hums lightly in the side of my head. I am Salvador Dali’s melted watch. I am mashed potato. Cushelle is talking about how she wants to go to Australia so she can spend more time with her new partner. She is in love this time and it’s serious.

My brain relaxes and all is well.