I do not think it is the pain that follows me.
If it were pain, it would be simple.
Pain ends.
What remains is something else.
Something much harder to explain.
Because the laboratory no longer exists when I leave.
The door closes.
The walls disappear.
The lime dust settles.
The Master’s voice is gone.
And yet something continues.
Something remains inside.
For days I try to convince myself that it means nothing.
I tell myself it was an experience.
A moment.
A procedure.
Nothing more.
But the thought returns.
It always returns.
It appears while I eat breakfast.
It appears while I am working.
It appears while I am speaking to someone.
And it appears most of all when everything becomes quiet.
Then I remember the room.
Not vaguely.
I remember it too well.
I remember distances.
I remember shadows.
I remember details that should not matter.
The texture of a wall.
The way the light remained motionless.
The third red line.
The one separated from the other two.
The one near the upper part of the door frame.
I still do not know why I remember it.
It was not important.
It was not an instruction.
It was not a tool.
It was not part of the process.
And yet it remains sharper than many people I have known.
Sharper than entire conversations.
Sharper than whole years of my life.
That is what begins to hurt.
Because the more time passes, the more defined that place becomes.
And the more blurred everything else seems.
Sometimes I am sitting with a friend.
I listen to what he is saying.
I answer.
I smile.
Everything appears normal.
And then something fractures.
A small invisible crack.
And suddenly I remember something else.
The Master’s breathing.
Not an order.
Not a correction.
Not a word.
Only the breathing.
Because in the end there was nothing left to do.
Everything had already been adjusted.
Everything had already been completed.
The only thing left was to remain.
And while I remained, I could hear that breathing.
Slow.
Steady.
Indifferent.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
And every time I remember it, I feel something that resembles sadness.
A strange sadness.
A sadness that does not feel as though it comes from the past.
It feels as though it comes from the present.
Because now I am here.
And that is not.
And yet part of me is still waiting.
Still waiting to hear that breathing again.
Still waiting to remain motionless while time stops behaving like time.
Still waiting for the moment when there is nothing left to decide.
Nothing left to explain.
Nothing left to interpret.
Only to remain until the end.
I try to resist it.
I try to tell myself it makes no sense.
I try to repeat that I do not want this.
That it does not fit who I am.
That it should not occupy so much space inside my mind.
But resistance seems to feed something.
Every denial returns as a larger presence.
As though I were trying to hold back water with my hands.
As though every attempt to move away produces exactly the opposite effect.
And perhaps that is what hurts the most.
Not obedience.
Not waiting.
Not memory.
But discovering that the obsession continues growing even when I try to abandon it.
As though part of me remained inside that room.
As though I never truly left.
As though I am still there, motionless, watching a closed door, listening to calm breathing somewhere beyond the darkness, waiting for something that never fully arrives.
I have to move the neck I am not moving it…
