The strange thing isn’t that I come back.
The strange thing is that sometimes I can feel the exact moment I’m about to come back.
I’m doing something else.
Replying to messages.
Watching a show.
Reading something completely unrelated.
And then it appears.
Not the subject itself.
The idea of it.
Like a door opening on its own somewhere in my head.
At first it was curiosity.
Or at least that’s what I called it.
Curiosity sounded harmless.
You read something.
You watch a video.
You wonder what it’s like.
That’s all.
But at some point it stopped feeling like that.
I don’t know when.
That’s what bothers me most.
I can’t remember the moment it started taking up more space.
I only remember that it stayed longer every time.
Like a tab left open.
Like a song you don’t even like that much but somehow keeps playing.
It happened again last night.
I checked the time.
1:43 a.m.
I remember because I thought that was enough.
I closed everything.
Really closed it.
For a few minutes I even felt proud of myself.
As if I had made an important decision.
I placed my phone face down on the table.
I just stared at it.
As if the gesture had some kind of power.
As if five seconds of willpower could erase entire weeks of coming back.
Five minutes later I turned it over.
There wasn’t even an argument.
No struggle.
It just happened.
And I think that’s what unsettles me most.
Every time it feels less like a decision.
The screen stayed black for a second.
I saw my reflection.
And for that brief moment I had a strange feeling.
It looked like I was watching someone who was watching.
As if there was a small distance between the person who wanted to stop and the person who already knew exactly what he was going to do next.
The worst part is that I wasn’t looking for anything new.
That has changed too.
I used to look for answers.
Now I’m looking for something much harder to explain.
A feeling.
A recognition.
The exact moment when I find something I already knew.
And every time it happens I tell myself I’m going to understand it.
That I’ll figure out what it means.
That I’ll finally reach the bottom of it.
But I never do.
Because there’s always something else to read.
Another video.
Another story.
Another detail.
Another excuse.
I thought the answer was waiting at the end of the search.
Now I’m starting to suspect that the search was what I wanted all along.
There’s a cold cup beside the computer.
I don’t remember when it stopped being warm.
I need to move my neck.
I realize I’ve been sitting still for too long.
I think about it.
I wait a few more seconds.
As if even that required a decision.
I have to move the neck I am not moving it I should…
