I don’t know when it stopped feeling like just a practical thing.
The harness, I mean.
At first it was exactly that. Something that gets adjusted. Fastened. Done.
But when the Operator tightens the final buckle across my chest, I notice something that doesn’t fit that explanation.
It’s not pain.
It’s… attention.
Too much attention in one single point.
And that bothers me more than it should.
I’ve noticed I don’t breathe the same way when it’s fully tightened.
Not because I can’t.
But because I realize I’m breathing differently.
That’s the strange part.
Not the change itself.
But noticing the change while it happens.
For a second I’ve felt something I don’t want to name.
It wasn’t comfort.
It wasn’t discomfort either.
It was something in between that I can’t sort out without making it sound wrong.
And that made me stay still.
Like moving would confirm it.
I’ve tried to think about something else.
It didn’t work.
The leather is still there, even when I’m not looking at it.
Not exactly on the skin.
More like in the way the body no longer feels fully “without it.”
That thought made me feel embarrassed.
Not the harness.
But the fact that a part of me doesn’t clearly reject it.
That it doesn’t say “no” cleanly.
That it hesitates for a second too long before deciding.
I’ve noticed something worse.
When the adjustment is perfect… I don’t want it looser.
That shouldn’t happen.
Or at least I shouldn’t notice it like this.
I thought about taking it off.
Just thinking it.
Not doing it.
And in that moment I felt a kind of… tension.
Not physical exactly.
More like the body understood the sentence before I did.
I stopped writing for a moment.
I don’t know why.
I think I was trying to go back to being “normal” in the way I think about it.
But it doesn’t come back.
It only shifts places.
Now I can see it more clearly:
it’s not that the harness is tight.
It’s that it gives me a boundary.
And the boundary feels… too defined.
Too easy to recognize.
And that’s what I don’t want to admit:
the curiosity hasn’t decreased.
It has moved.
It is closer to the body now.
The neck I am not moving it I should…
