There are mornings when I wake up completely convinced that it is over.
Not an emotion.
A conclusion.
I open my eyes.
I stare at the ceiling.
And for a few seconds everything feels obvious.
I do not want to be submissive.
I do not like feeling this way.
I do not like realizing how much space this occupies inside my mind.
I do not like discovering that part of my life revolves around a waiting I cannot even explain.
So I begin reasoning through it.
As if I am solving a problem.
I review the arguments.
I list them.
I organize them.
I tell myself it makes no sense.
I tell myself I have exaggerated.
I tell myself there are other things.
Work.
Responsibilities.
People.
Projects.
An entire life outside that orbit.
And for a few moments I believe it.
I truly believe it.
Then it happens.
It always happens.
I do not know exactly when.
I do not know exactly how.
But my mind shifts.
Effortlessly.
Without permission.
Like a needle finding north.
And I return there.
Not to the meeting.
Not even to him.
I return to the process.
To the waiting.
To that impossible image of myself standing motionless before him.
Doing nothing.
Proving nothing.
Trying to be nothing.
Only remaining.
As if my entire function were simply to last long enough for something to reach completion.
And that is when the sadness appears.
Not ordinary sadness.
Not the kind that can be explained.
If I were depressed, I could understand it.
If I were suffering, I could name it.
But this is different.
Life continues functioning.
I still laugh.
I still work.
I still talk to people.
I still do everything I am supposed to do.
And yet something loses definition.
Like a photograph slightly out of focus.
Things are still there.
But they feel less dense.
Less important.
Less real.
While the waiting acquires more and more detail.
More texture.
More weight.
The weeks before the meeting are the worst.
Or the best.
I still do not know which.
Every day I try to regain distance.
Every day I conclude that I have regained distance.
And every day that distance lasts a little less.
At first I could hold it for hours.
Then for a morning.
Then for a few minutes.
Now it sometimes survives only a few seconds.
The reasoning grows shorter.
The conclusion grows longer.
And his process occupies more and more territory.
Sometimes I remember the way he pronounces numbers.
Not the numbers.
The way.
The precision.
The absence of urgency.
The feeling that every number already exists before he speaks it.
As though he is merely removing a curtain and revealing something that was already there.
And then I realize something deeply unsettling.
Perhaps the obsession is not him.
Perhaps it is not submission either.
Perhaps it is the sensation of slowly becoming a version of myself adjusted for that process.
A quieter version.
A simpler version.
A more precise version.
A version whose only task is to remain.
Until the end.
Until the sequence is complete.
Until the final number finds its place.
Until his voice no longer requires me.
And the most disturbing part is that the harder I try to escape the idea…
The more perfect it seems.
The more inevitable.
The closer.
As though part of me has already begun arriving long before the rest.
As though the meeting has not happened yet.
And yet something inside me is already there.
Waiting.
I have to move the neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
