I don’t know exactly when it started.
That’s the part that bothers me most.
Because I would like to point to a date.
A page.
A video.
A conversation.
Something.
Anything.
But whenever I try to find the beginning, I discover something uncomfortable.
I’ve been looking for it for weeks.
And every time, it seems to have started earlier.
Today I found myself reading about dominance and submission again.
Not for long.
Just a few minutes.
At least that’s what I tell myself.
Just a few minutes.
Then I check the clock.
Almost an hour has passed.
I close one tab.
Open another.
Then another.
I’m not looking for anything specific.
That unsettles me too.
If someone asked me what I was trying to find, I wouldn’t know how to answer.
I’m not searching for instructions.
I’m not searching for scenes.
I’m not searching for people.
I’m searching for something I still can’t name.
And the less I can name it, the more often I return.
There is a small shame in that.
Not a dramatic shame.
Not a catastrophe.
Something worse.
An ordinary shame.
A quiet one.
The kind that appears when you clear your browsing history even though nobody asked you to.
Something strange happened this afternoon.
I came across a sentence I had already read before.
I’m sure of it.
I recognized it before finishing the first line.
And yet I couldn’t remember where I had seen it.
Or when.
I couldn’t even remember being interested in this subject months ago.
But the sentence seemed to be waiting for me.
As if it had been left open somewhere.
It wasn’t an important sentence.
Not brilliant.
Not provocative.
It was only about trust.
And still I spent several minutes staring at it.
As if something were hidden inside it.
As if there were a second reading beneath the first.
I closed the screen.
Tried to do something else.
Make coffee.
Organize papers.
Answer messages.
The curiosity remained.
Not in my thoughts.
Somewhere else.
Like a quiet pressure.
Not intense.
Not urgent.
Worse.
Constant.
There is a cup on the table.
I’m looking at it while I write this.
I left it there an hour ago.
At least I think I did.
The ring it left on the wood looks older than that.
As if it had been waiting for me.
I know that makes no sense.
And yet I keep looking at it.
I’m beginning to suspect that curiosity works this way.
It doesn’t arrive all at once.
It leaves small traces.
Then one day you recognize them.
And make the mistake of believing they just appeared.
The hardest thing to admit isn’t the excitement.
That would be easy.
The hardest thing is admitting the interest.
The attention.
The amount of mental space something begins to occupy when only a month ago it felt distant.
I keep telling myself I’m only reading.
Only observing.
Only trying to understand.
But there are moments when that explanation stops reassuring me.
Because I begin to notice something else.
I begin arranging my thoughts around that curiosity.
As if I were making room for it.
As if some part of me were expecting something.
I don’t know what.
And that is exactly what embarrasses me.
Not knowing what I’m waiting for.
A few minutes ago I opened one page.
Then another.
Then another.
They all seemed different.
They all said roughly the same things.
And still I kept going.
As if I were looking for a specific sentence.
A sentence that doesn’t exist yet.
There is a rule here that I still don’t understand.
Nothing appears for the first time.
There is only a moment when you finally recognize it.
That’s what worries me.
Not the curiosity.
Not the fantasy.
Not even the contradiction.
But the possibility that something has been growing for a very long time and I’ve only just begun to see it.
I look at the screen.
Close it.
Open it again a few minutes later.
Not because I forgot something.
Because it feels as though something remained open.
And I’m not sure it was in the browser.
The room looks the same.
The cup is still on the table.
The light is still on.
But when I sit down again, I have the feeling I’ve returned to a different place.
I don’t know whether I’m discovering something.
Or remembering it.
I have to move my neck…
