There are moments when the slap doesn’t begin in the impact.
It begins before it.
Inside me.
In the waiting.
In that second where I already know what is going to happen and still do nothing to stop it.
And that is what embarrasses me, even now, writing this.
Not the pain.
Not the impact.
But the part of me that stays still waiting.
As if something about it feels familiar.
As if my body understands something I refuse to admit.
Sometimes I think I don’t remember the hit itself very clearly.
I remember the before.
The microsecond right before it.
The absurd tension of knowing it without wanting to know it.
And then, a kind of cut.
Not a thought.
Not a sentence.
Just a gap.
As if my mind loses continuity for a moment.
And the worst part is that the gap doesn’t feel entirely negative.
That is what confuses me.
Because part of me experiences it almost as relief.
As interruption.
As if, for that instant, I no longer have to hold anything together.
No decision.
No control.
No narrative.
Just suspension.
And that is difficult to admit without feeling like something in me is misaligned.
It is not a clear fantasy.
Not something I can explain in a clean, linear way.
It is more like an internal repetition.
Something that returns without being called.
I have tried to understand when it started.
I don’t know.
There was no single moment.
It accumulated.
First as curiosity.
Then as searching.
Then as a pattern I began to recognize even when I didn’t want to.
I looked things up.
Stories.
Descriptions.
Not because I wanted “that” exactly.
But because there was something in the idea of interruption I couldn’t stop looking at.
And that is what I struggle to admit.
It wasn’t the slap.
It was what happens inside me right after.
That feeling of not being fully here.
Of not having to continue being coherent for a moment.
But then something else appears.
The part that judges.
The part that asks why I am thinking about this so much.
Why it takes up space.
Why I can’t simply let it go like other things.
And that tension doesn’t resolve.
It repeats.
Again and again.
As if two versions of me are looking at the same thing without agreeing.
One says: “this means nothing.”
The other doesn’t answer.
It just returns.
I don’t know exactly what I am looking for here.
And that is the most uncomfortable part.
This is not a story I can close.
It is something that interrupts the way I think about myself.
And every time I try to explain it clearly, it becomes less clear.
Not more.
Less.
As if the more I look at it, the more it falls apart.
And yet I keep returning.
Not to the slap.
But to the moment where I stop knowing how to continue being myself.
My neck I am not moving it…
