Your show has an uninvited guest

You've never watched this show alone. The theme music starts and your hand moves. Nothing's wrong. You're not stressed. Evening after evening, the episode and the cigarette showed up together, and your brain filed them as one event. This isn't appetite. It's a sequence trying to finish itself.

The cigarette moved onto your couch like it came with the show. It didn't. The show got made without it. The couch got built without it. All it ever added was the itch for the next one. A link built by repetition comes apart the same way.

Break the scene before the opening credits finish. Take an orange to the other end of the couch and peel it. Slowly. Thumbnail under the skin, the sharp spray, the sticky fingers. Eat it one piece at a time. Your hands are full and your seat is new. Your body can't run the old script on a changed set.

The urge might loiter for the first few minutes, like a guest nobody invited. Let it stand there. It leaves on its own. God's handing this evening back to you whole, the show, the couch, the laugh at the good bits. Credits roll. Orange peel on the table, nothing else in your hands. You got the whole episode, and it got nothing.