There’s something I don’t understand.
And the more I try to understand it, the worse it gets.
At first I thought I was just researching something.
Now I’m not so sure.
In the beginning it was easy.
I’d read something.
Close the page.
Go on with my day.
Or at least I thought I did.
Then I started noticing something strange.
I couldn’t remember entire articles.
I couldn’t remember entire videos.
But I remembered ridiculous little details.
A sentence.
An instruction.
A particular look.
And they would come back at the strangest moments.
Standing in line.
Walking down the street.
Trying to fall asleep.
That’s what started to worry me.
Not the arousal.
The persistence.
Because arousal fades.
This didn’t.
It stayed.
Like a song you can’t get out of your head.
And it embarrassed me.
A lot.
Because I couldn’t explain it.
If it had been purely sexual, it would have been easier.
But it wasn’t just that.
There was something else.
Something I couldn’t name.
Sometimes I’d open my browser fully intending to look up something completely different.
And somehow I’d end up reading the exact same things again.
The same topics.
The same dynamics.
The same stories.
As if I was convinced there was something important hidden in them.
Something I still hadn’t understood.
The worst part is that I started lying to myself.
Small lies.
“I’m not interested.”
“I’m just curious.”
“I’m only trying to understand.”
And maybe all of those things were true.
But they were also starting to sound like excuses.
Because normal curiosity gets satisfied.
This didn’t.
The more I read, the larger it became.
And the larger it became, the more it changed.
It wasn’t the same kind of arousal anymore.
It was something stranger.
Something quieter.
Something more present.
As if it had started blending into the way I saw myself.
And that was what truly scared me.
Because I wasn’t observing it from the outside anymore.
Some part of it had started observing me.
I don’t know when that happened.
I don’t know if it had been happening from the beginning.
I only know that every time I promise myself I’ll stop looking…
another question appears.
And I click on it.
As if I’m still hoping to find an explanation.
Even though I’m beginning to suspect that the explanation is exactly what I’m trying to avoid.
I have to move the neck…
