“If I could explain it, I could stop doing it.”
But I can’t explain it without it sounding false.
It started as curiosity.
An ordinary afternoon.
Nothing special.
Just opening a page. Then another.
I don’t know why I stayed.
It wasn’t even clear arousal at first… it was more like a kind of sticky attention. Like something that doesn’t fully interest you, but you also can’t close.
Then it changed.
Then it wasn’t just reading anymore.
It was going back.
Repeating.
Looking for another version of the same thing.
Another explanation.
Another way of framing it.
And every time I found more information, instead of feeling satisfied… another layer opened.
That’s what I feel embarrassed about.
Not the curiosity.
But the fact that it doesn’t go away.
I inhabit something before I understand it.
Sometimes I’m just doing normal things — scrolling, lying down, distracted — and suddenly that sideways thought appears, like it comes from somewhere I don’t control.
It’s not even a full idea.
More like a tilt.
A small internal shift.
And I follow it.
Even when I don’t want to.
Even when I tell myself it makes no sense.
At first I thought it was something “theoretical”.
Something you can read without consequences.
But it isn’t.
It doesn’t stay outside.
It starts taking up space.
Not exactly in the mind.
Lower than that.
In the body.
In the way I’m sitting without noticing, or realizing too late I’ve been staring at the screen for too long.
I remember the exact moment it stopped being just curiosity.
There was no clear change.
Just one day I noticed I was already searching for things I would have felt embarrassed to even open before.
And the strange part is that the shame never comes before.
Always after.
Never in time to stop it.
I don’t understand which part of me is interested.
That’s the sentence I keep repeating.
It’s not “I want this.”
It’s more uncomfortable than that.
It feels like there is a part of me that looks before I do.
That opens things before I decide to open them.
And I only realize it afterwards.
Too late.
Sometimes I close everything.
Really.
I close it all.
And I tell myself: that’s it.
It doesn’t matter.
But a few minutes later it comes back.
Not as a clear thought.
More like a return.
A soft pull.
Like the thing itself has inertia.
And the worst part isn’t the content.
It’s the repetition.
The way it starts to take up space.
As if it stays behind even after I close the screen.
As if it doesn’t fully leave.
It embarrasses me to admit it like this.
Because there is no elegant version of it.
Only this:
open
read
come back
feel curiosity again
a little stronger
a little stranger
and not know when it stopped being just information
If I could explain it, I could let it go.
But every attempt to explain it makes it more real.
And that’s what I don’t tell anyone.
Because I still don’t know what it is.
Only that it is no longer in the same place where it started.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
