A couple of quick things. They are going to sound very different, but I swear it’s going to come back around.

First, I went through a rough time earlier this month. It’s why I haven’t written anything in a while; this is generally a place of either positive recommendations or self-righteous criticism, both of which are pretty hard to do when you’re trying to get back to normal because you’re sad about a girl. I will return to telling you why I’m right about things when I’m back from my vacation and you will regret it.

Second, I love TV. I always have. I used to come within seconds of missing the bus to school because I didn’t want to miss the end of The Adventures of Tintin or Young Robin Hood. I’d rush home from school so that I could watch Batman ‘66 and Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers in my parents’ bedroom, where the good TV was. When I was told I couldn’t watch The Simpsons because my parents didn’t like how it “glorified stupidity and bad parenting,” I eventually figured out a game where, if my parents caught me watching it but laughed before they could order me to change the channel, I could usually finish the episode with barely a reminder that it wasn’t technically allowed. I tell people that M*A*S*H taught me about the horrors of war, and while they usually chuckle, the truth is that seeing Hawkeye Pierce despair against the hopelessness of patching up young men just so they could go die really did help turn me into the democratic socialist pacifist I am today. I was raised in a two-household family: my parents and television.

But more than that, I love broadcast television. More and more, I hear about people dropping their cable subscriptions and instead watching television through streaming services like Netflix, Hulu or the awful, non-standardized Canadian equivalent of it. And I just do not get it.

Don’t get me wrong; I understand that it’s becoming an increasingly feasible, cheap alternative to spending $80/month on a dozen channels you watch and a hundred you don’t. Hell, I have a DVR; I barely watch any scripted television shows live when they air, so it’s not like I’m high and mighty about watching things live. But that’s not why I don’t think I could cancel my cable subscription any time soon. HBO isn’t even the reason, and I won’t shut up about Last Week Tonight. No, I don’t think I could do without broadcast television because, I swear to god, it is what kept me going during the rough patch almost as much as my wonderful friends or my family did. It is a big reason why I was able to get up and go to work and have a conversation, as stupid as that sounds.

Here’s the thing: depression is a motherfucker and it knocked me flat. All of a sudden, I had these hours to fill up, no desire to talk to anyone or even go across the street to buy food. I just wanted to shut down and wake up a few weeks later in time to board a flight to Chicago. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t sleep, either; all I was left with were these patches of hours stretching out before me where all I could think about was the one thing I didn’t want to. So I did what any sane person who didn’t want to think about their own problem does: I put on The West Wing on Netflix and watched two and a half seasons over a couple of days, in between the TV in the living room and the iPad in bed.

But I didn’t feel better. And sure, you could make the very reasonable case that this was because I was only a few days out from an emotional event and was actively trying to not deal with it. That probably wouldn’t be entirely wrong. I’m not trying to give out lessons. Eventually, I had to get up and go to work and meet obligations, and I finally started seeing my family or friends again, which I will admit helped a little. But at the end of those days, I was still back home, running on two hours of sleep because staring at the ceiling under the covers was all I could do. Netflix wasn’t really helping, because I still had to be present enough to pick a show and occasionally tell it that yes, I am still watching The West Wing, stop judging. I had to be present enough to make decisions, and that just wasn’t working out for me because everything else came creeping back in almost immediately.

So I turned on Friends.

I love Friends on the best of days. I’ve got most of the series on DVD and I’ve seen every episode more times than I can count. I still watch it on a regular basis. I appreciate the nostalgia and the classic multi-camera timing, but that’s not what’s important to me right now. What’s important to me is that it and 30 Rock are on in a two-hour block late at night. I can turn them on and watch until something else is on or I fall asleep. In the rough spell, I could fall asleep on the couch at 1am a lot more easily than I could fall asleep in my bed at 3, and late night syndication was my best friend, whether it was sitcoms, movies, sports scores or Mythbusters. There’s something unbelievably comforting about being able to let glowing white noise temporarily stop the spinning wheels of being sad. You have no idea how comforting terrible Trivago commercials are until it’s 2am and they’re the thing that helps you get to sleep. It’s hard to be sad when Joey and Chandler are arguing about a movie premiere. It’s hard to be angry when Phoebe is carrying her brother’s babies.

There aren’t any cracks in broadcast programming to let the stare-at-the-ceiling thoughts back in. It’s always there, humming, pinging out across the air, helping pretend everything is okay and that you’re not sad or incandescently angry. It’s a drone, it’s white noise, sure. But sometimes it’s nice just not to think when all you can think about is something that upsets you. It’s freeing to give yourself up to the inscrutable gods of late night programming, floating on the invisible waves. Who knows, you might even laugh. That took me about a week.

This wasn’t a long-term solution, of course. It never could be, and only the truly emotionally stunted could think it was. The cracks were still there. At some point, it was necessary to deal with all that. But in the immediate crash, what was needed was triage. When you’re cut open, the first thing you need is stitches. When you can’t even talk, it can be nice to not even think about that.

Things got better. I went out for a meal and then another. I walked a dog. I spent a day floating on the river with friends. I watched baseball games with my dad. I started to watch and listen to programs that weren’t in late night syndication. Things are still a little messed up, but I’m sleeping fine. This week, I’ll go to Chicago and eat and see baseball at I place I’ve dreamt about for years, and then I’ll go to Memphis and laugh and drink with friends. Things will get even better eventually as scar tissue fades. And a big part of getting there will have been watching Friends late at night when I couldn’t bear to do anything else.

I’ll keep paying for that health insurance as long as I can.