We want to believe our lives are those of quiet comfort, behind closed doors. Cozy nights by the fire.

Instead, we might find despair behind those doors. We might find the living dead. Still, we live outside of this realm. We are not those people. We are us.

And yet,

Everything is connected.

No acts are random.

A butterfly flaps its wings.

A tree falls in the forest and someone does hear it.

One hand claps.

Breaking Bad is not simply about a seemingly ordinary, cancer-stricken man who makes the decision to cook meth; it is about all of us, our mortality, our choices. The metaphors layer upon the metaphors until it is unclear which action is real and which is figurative.

The show is not simply watched; it is felt.

The viewer is not only the voyeur; the viewer becomes the actor.

The action does not just happen outside of us; it lives within.

Indeed, it is parasitic.

As such, Breaking Bad has ceased to exist outside of me. I’m within it and it is within me. I have been intruded upon. I have been traumatized. I chose to swim in the water and now with each episode, I am lost and then found again.

I do not know how I feel. I only know that I feel and that I must not stop watching. I must make sure they’re all safe. To look away is to let them die.

I will not look away.