I do not like admitting it.
I do not even like thinking about it too much.
If someone asked me directly, I would probably try to explain it some other way.
I would call it curiosity.
Habit.
Routine.
Anything except this.
Yet I keep ending up there.
Always.
Not because I want to obey.
Not because I particularly enjoy being watched.
In fact, there are moments when it irritates me.
Moments when it makes me uncomfortable.
Moments when I wonder what exactly I am doing.
And still I return.
The strange thing is that I almost never think about grand things.
I do not imagine ceremonies.
I do not imagine transformations.
I think about absurdly small details.
The way he stands still when he is concentrating.
How long he takes to answer when he is sorting something out in his head.
The way his fingers remain resting on a surface a few seconds longer than necessary.
I do not know why I remember those things.
I should remember something else.
But it is always those details.
Always.
Sometimes I imagine simply being in the same room.
Nothing more.
Not even talking.
Just present.
While he does whatever he needs to do.
Reading something.
Writing something.
Checking something.
Walking from one side of the room to the other.
I am not participating.
I am not contributing.
I am not even necessary.
And yet some part of me keeps returning to that image.
That should bother me more than it does.
For years I thought submission was a word that belonged to other people.
I thought it meant enjoying things I never enjoyed.
I thought it was an identity.
A desire.
A preference.
I thought it would feel different.
What I never understood is that, for me, it does not arrive as pleasure.
It arrives as permanence.
As a strange need to remain when anyone else would have already left.
There are moments when I watch him working and feel something close to exhaustion.
Not euphoria.
Not happiness.
Something harder to explain.
Like holding an uncomfortable position for too long and still not wanting to move.
Because moving would break something.
I do not know exactly what.
But something.
Sometimes I catch myself waiting for a signal I would not even know how to identify.
A glance.
A small gesture.
The way he shifts his weight from one foot to the other while thinking.
It is ridiculous, but I remember those things more clearly than entire conversations.
I remember one occasion when he remained silent for several minutes.
He was not even looking at me.
He was busy.
I was not doing anything either.
And yet I still remember it.
I do not know why I keep returning to that memory.
Nothing happened.
Absolutely nothing.
Maybe that is exactly why.
Because there was nothing to do.
Nothing to prove.
Nothing to achieve.
Only to remain.
And the longer I remain, the stranger one thing becomes.
I start losing interest in myself.
Not in a dramatic way.
Not like a tragedy.
More like a distant conversation gradually fading until it can no longer be heard.
My own internal voice becomes less urgent.
Less important.
Smaller.
Meanwhile, he remains there.
And his process keeps moving forward.
I do not need to understand it.
I do not need to direct it.
I do not even need to be part of it.
I only need not to interrupt it.
I only need to stay until it is finished.
And whenever I try to explain why, I never find a convincing answer.
I only find the same image.
The same room.
The same silence.
The same waiting.
And me.
Still there.
The neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
