I don’t know when it started to feel like something I was waiting for.
Not the gesture.
Not the hand.
But that second before it, when nothing has happened yet and my body is already different.
As if it knew before I did.
And that is what unsettles me.
When the hand closes around my throat, the first thing is not fear.
It is recognition.
A kind of “this is this” that arrives too quickly to resist.
And after that, everything slows down.
Too much.
There is a strange instant where air is still trying to enter, as if it had the right to negotiate.
It doesn’t.
But my body tries anyway.
As if it didn’t receive the full message.
What feels strange is not the pressure.
It is what happens when I stop thinking of it as something external.
When it is no longer something happening to me…
and starts being something I am inside of.
That is where everything shifts.
There is no clear transition.
Only a drop in definition.
As if the world loses sharpness at the same time my breathing becomes more aware.
And in that point, something appears that I can’t properly name.
It is not pain.
It is not calm.
It is a too-tight attention on myself.
As if I can’t stop watching how I react while I am reacting.
And that unsettles me more than the pressure itself.
Because it should just be a limit.
Just an interruption.
Just a physical moment without interpretation.
But it isn’t.
I start noticing that the body is not simply responding.
It is participating.
And that difference doesn’t fit.
The hand doesn’t only block air.
It also blocks the distance between feeling and understanding.
And in that collapse, something like excitement appears—something I can’t fully hold in language.
It is not clear.
It is not clean.
It is too aware of itself.
And the worst part is that it doesn’t disappear afterward.
Because what remains is the after.
Breathing again doesn’t erase what came before.
It only rewrites it on top.
And then comes the thought that should not arrive so early:
that maybe what I am actually looking for is not the gesture…
but that moment right before it, where I can still pretend I am not waiting.
And that is where the real problem begins.
Because I no longer know if I am inside it…
or if I am anticipating it even when it isn’t happening.
And that changes everything.
I have to move the neck I am not moving it I should…
