I don’t know when it started taking up so much space.
If I think about it, I could probably point to some random afternoon. A search. A video. An article. Something I found by accident and should have closed after thirty seconds.
But I didn’t.
And now, whenever I try to explain it, it sounds worse than it actually is.
Because I’m not doing anything.
Nothing has even happened.
I haven’t met anyone.
I haven’t had any experiences.
There are no sessions. No collar. Nothing real.
I’m just reading.
And yet it feels less and less like it’s only reading.
That’s the part I’m embarrassed to admit.
Sometimes I’m at work and I catch myself thinking about something I read the night before.
A sentence.
An image.
A description that shouldn’t mean anything.
And somehow it comes back anyway.
Like a song that gets stuck in your head.
The worst part is that I don’t even know what exactly attracts me.
For weeks I told myself it was sexual.
That was the easiest explanation.
But I’m not sure anymore.
Because the excitement changes.
At first it was immediate.
Now it’s something else.
Slower.
Deeper.
More uncomfortable.
Like curiosity mixed with something I don’t have a name for.
Sometimes I read stories about collars.
And I feel ridiculous writing that.
Because it isn’t really the collar.
It’s what it seems to represent.
The idea that something so small could end up meaning so much to someone.
That an ordinary object could take up space in a person’s mind until it becomes important.
I don’t understand why I keep thinking about it.
I honestly don’t.
I’ve tried to stop reading about these things.
More than once.
Closing tabs.
Deleting history.
Convincing myself it’s just a strange phase.
But it always comes back.
Not aggressively.
Not all at once.
It comes back quietly.
When I’m bored.
When I’m lying in bed.
When I’m waiting for a bus.
As if some part of me keeps asking questions long after I’ve decided to stop asking them.
And then I start reading again.
Just five minutes.
Just out of curiosity.
Just to understand it a little better.
There’s always an excuse.
And every time I come back, I find something new.
And every time I find something new, I become a little more confused.
Because I should be losing interest.
And the exact opposite is happening.
There are moments when I’m embarrassed by how much time I’ve spent thinking about this.
Because from the outside it sounds ridiculous.
Nothing has happened.
And yet something feels like it’s happening.
Something small.
Slow.
Hard to explain.
Like curiosity started growing underneath everything else.
And now it’s taking up more space than it should.
If I could explain what I’m looking for, maybe I could stop looking.
But I still don’t know what it is.
And I suspect that uncertainty is exactly what keeps bringing me back.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
