I promised myself I wouldn’t check my phone.
Just for an hour.
Not even a full hour.
Thirty minutes.
That should be easy.
A normal person can go thirty minutes without looking at a screen.
I should be able to do that too.
I guess.
I placed it face down on the table.
Tried to read.
But part of me kept listening to it.
Even though it was silent.
Even though nothing had happened.
That was the worst part.
Because I started imagining the notification before it existed.
Maybe someone had replied.
Maybe someone had reacted.
Maybe someone had sent a message.
Maybe that person.
Always that person.
And the harder I tried not to think about it.
The more I thought about it.
It’s ridiculous.
Because nothing is actually happening.
There’s no important conversation.
No emergency.
Nobody needs me.
And yet I feel this strange tension.
As if I’m waiting for something.
As if one small vibration could change my mood.
When I finally checked the screen, there was nothing there.
Not a single notification.
And I felt a disappointment so ridiculous that I was embarrassed by it.
Genuinely embarrassed.
Because nobody should feel that way over something so small.
I stared at the dark screen for a few seconds.
Thinking.
Trying to understand what exactly I had been waiting for.
And I don’t think it was a message.
Or a reaction.
Or even attention.
It was something else.
Possibility.
The feeling that something might happen.
That someone might appear.
That someone might be thinking about me.
Lately it happens more often.
Ever since I started reading certain things.
Researching.
Following curiosities I used to ignore.
It’s as if there’s a new part of me now.
A part that’s awake.
And waiting.
Always waiting.
Sometimes for a word.
Sometimes for an image.
Sometimes for a conversation.
Sometimes for a simple notification.
And that’s the part I don’t want to admit.
That a part of me keeps checking the screen.
Not because there’s something there.
But because I want there to be.
I do not know when it started.
That is the worst part.
I cannot remember the exact moment.
I only know that now, sometimes, I feel a vibration that does not exist.
And I still look.
I always look.
The phone is face down.
The room is silent.
Nothing has sounded.
Nothing has lit up.
Yet something inside me has already risen.
Like an animal.
Like a reflex.
Like obedience.
I think that is the word that embarrasses me the most.
Obedience.
Because nobody is calling me.
Nobody needs me.
Nobody is demanding my attention.
And yet my body responds.
As though it had received an order.
Sometimes I am reading.
Sometimes I am working.
Sometimes I am talking to someone.
And suddenly the feeling appears.
A small tension.
A pull.
The suspicion of a notification.
And I stop being where I was.
Part of me leaves the room.
Part of me is already inside the screen.
Waiting.
It feels strange to admit it.
I always thought dependence would look dramatic.
Something obvious.
Something impossible to hide.
But it is not.
It looks more like this.
Interrupting yourself constantly.
Never being completely present anywhere.
Living with a door permanently half-open inside your head.
The notification does not even have to arrive.
That is the disturbing part.
The anticipation does the work by itself.
The possibility already creates the effect.
As though the system had learned how to occupy the space that once belonged to silence.
The lime room returns.
It always returns.
The white walls.
The cracks.
The suspended dust.
And me sitting there staring at a dark screen.
Waiting for something.
I am not entirely sure what.
A message.
A reaction.
A signal.
Proof that I am still connected to something.
The most embarrassing part is that when the notification finally arrives, it often does not matter at all.
I open it.
I read it.
And discover it was nothing.
It was always nothing.
Yet for a few seconds it felt absolutely essential.
That frightens me.
How easily something irrelevant can acquire the weight of a necessity.
How easily I surrender.
How easily I submit.
I need to move my neck.
I am not moving it.
The screen remains dark.
I think I felt another vibration.
Probably nothing happened.
Probably.
But my hand is already moving.
And somehow that feels more real than any notification.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
