The worst part was not signing it.
The worst part was that it continued to exist afterward.
I thought the conversation would end when the conversation ended.
I thought the limits would become words again.
I thought consent would become a document again.
It did not.
It is still here.
Not constantly.
Worse.
It appears.
I am working.
It appears.
I am buying bread.
It appears.
I am trying to watch a movie.
It appears.
Not as a memory.
Memories belong to the past.
This does not.
This has presence.
Sometimes I am perfectly fine.
Perfectly.
Laughing.
Talking.
Eating with someone.
And then something shifts a few millimeters inside my head.
Nothing visible.
Nothing dramatic.
But I know exactly what happened.
The blueprint returned.
I do not remember the conversation.
I remember the existence of the conversation.
I do not remember the sentences.
I remember that they exist.
I do not remember the voice.
I remember that a voice exists somewhere.
And that is worse.
Much worse.
Because I cannot argue with anything concrete.
I cannot answer.
I cannot correct.
I cannot finish the conversation.
The conversation remains open.
Like a door nobody closed.
Like a forgotten browser tab.
Like an application still running in the background.
Sometimes I try to think about something else.
It works for a few minutes.
Then I realize I am already thinking from inside the blueprint.
Not outside.
Inside.
And then the most embarrassing feeling arrives.
The hardest one to admit.
I begin wondering whether parts of me still behave as if that conversation were still happening.
As if I were still being observed.
As if I were still being evaluated.
As if some future version of me were still waiting for a correction that never comes.
I do not want to think that.
But it appears.
And returns.
And returns again.
There are absurd moments.
Completely absurd moments.
I am reading an irrelevant notification.
A promotion.
An update.
An unimportant message.
And for a fraction of a second a completely unrelated question appears.
What would he think of this?
It makes no sense.
There is no reason.
No logical connection.
And yet it appears.
Then it disappears.
Leaving embarrassment behind.
Because nobody can see it.
Nobody knows it just happened.
Nobody knows that part of my attention left the room for a second to verify the existence of someone who is not there.
And perhaps that is what frightens me most.
Not the presence.
The checking.
The fact that I keep checking.
The fact that some part of me is still searching for a reference point.
An orientation.
No.
Not orientation.
Something worse.
Authorization.
And when I notice that, a strange exhaustion settles in.
Because I no longer know where memory ends.
And I no longer know where habit begins.
I only know that the blueprint still exists.
Silently.
Demanding nothing.
Moving nowhere.
Speaking never.
Waiting.
I cannot move my fingers the mechanism has welded the atlas with the axis strictly following the immobility clause I should…
