I open the link again.
I wasn’t going to.
That’s the first thing I note before I even read.
The page loads slowly.
Too slowly to pretend it was accidental.
It’s the same one.
The same text.
The same tone I shouldn’t already understand.
I tell myself I’ll only look at the title.
Just that.
But I’m already scrolling a little.
One paragraph.
Two.
I close it.
I reopen it.
I don’t know why.
That’s not true.
I do know, but I don’t want to write it down.
There’s a highlighted sentence.
I hadn’t seen it before.
Or maybe I had, just not like this.
That’s the strange part.
It doesn’t feel like discovery.
It feels like delayed recognition.
As if the text had been waiting for me to understand it properly.
I close the tab again.
This time on purpose.
I stand up.
I do nothing.
Just stand up.
The phone is left face down.
I leave it that way because I think it helps.
It doesn’t.
I come back.
Not because I want to.
But because I’m already coming back while thinking about it.
The page is still open.
Or I’ve opened it again without noticing.
I’m losing the order of things.
I open another tab.
Not to search for the same thing.
To check it isn’t the same thing.
But it is.
In another form.
Small variations.
Small differences that should reassure me.
But don’t.
They do the opposite.
There’s something uncomfortable in the repetition.
Not in the text.
In me.
In how I return.
In how I check.
In how I need to confirm that the previous time wasn’t a mistake.
Today I tried not to go in.
I lasted a few minutes.
I don’t know how many.
I lost count.
I checked that too.
I opened the history.
Then closed it.
Then opened it again.
Because I couldn’t remember if I had already looked.
And I had.
That’s the worst part.
Not the page.
Not the content.
But the feeling of having done it before deciding to do it.
As if the decision always arrives later.
Always later.
Now I’m writing this.
Not to explain it.
But to see if it changes.
If writing it stops it from repeating.
But I already know it won’t.
Because even while writing I’m already thinking about opening it again.
Just one more time.
Just to check I don’t need it.
My neck I should…
