ENGLISH
There is a memory that appears where it should not.
It does not arrive during important moments.
It does not appear late at night when I am alone.
It does not even come when I deliberately think about him.
It appears while I wait for water to boil.
While I search for my keys.
While I answer a meaningless question.
And for a few seconds everything else loses definition.
Because my mind returns to that first time.
To the exact moment when I felt that everything had been adjusted.
Not perfect.
Not happy.
Not euphoric.
Adjusted.
I remember something absurdly specific.
The feeling of my shoulders.
Not their position.
The absence of the need to decide their position.
It is a small difference.
But an enormous one.
As if a task I had performed my entire life had quietly disappeared.
I remember the way he breathed.
Not me.
Him.
A calm breath.
So calm it almost seemed motionless.
So quiet that my attention kept following it.
And the more I listened to it the less I understood why it affected me so deeply.
Nothing extraordinary was happening.
Yet something inside me began arranging itself around that calm.
That is what returns.
Not the entire process.
Not the details.
Not the sequence.
Only that moment.
The instant when I stopped feeling responsible for holding myself together.
And for a few seconds I became a simplified version of myself.
Reduced.
Adjusted.
Perhaps that is what obsesses me.
Because I still say I do not want to be submissive.
And I believe it.
When I wake up in the morning I believe it.
When I analyze it rationally I believe it.
When I list every reason I should stop thinking about it I believe it.
And then something happens.
Something tiny.
A pause.
A silence.
A breath.
And my mind returns to that memory on its own.
As if there were a hidden gravity.
As if every road eventually sloped toward the same destination.
The weeks before seeing him are the worst.
Or perhaps the strangest.
I still do not know.
Life continues functioning.
I work.
I speak.
I smile.
I make plans.
Yet everything seems slightly out of focus.
Not because I am sad.
Sadness would be simpler.
Sadness has an explanation.
This does not.
This feels more like living beside a door that remains closed while knowing exactly what exists behind it.
You do not think about it constantly.
But you never truly forget it either.
And every day the reasoning lasts a little less.
While the memory lasts a little longer.
The memory of that first correction.
The first time I felt my mind stop expanding in every direction.
The first time I felt I could remain.
Simply remain.
Without adding anything.
Without proving anything.
Without becoming anything new.
Only existing inside a structure that seemed to have been built before I arrived.
And the more I try to understand why I need to return to that feeling, the fewer answers I find.
Only a certainty.
A small certainty.
Persistent.
Quiet.
One that returns again and again.
Perhaps I am not waiting for the meeting.
Perhaps I am waiting to become that version of myself once more.
The version that no longer needed to decide.
The version that had already been adjusted.
And that, for the first time in a very long while, stopped feeling friction against itself.
The neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
