There is something that shouldn’t interest me this much.
And yet I keep returning to it.
Not always to the same pages.
Not always to the same texts.
But I return.
For a long time I thought it was the content that fascinated me.
The stories.
The dynamics.
The people.
Now I’m not so sure.
Last night I opened a tab I had closed three days earlier.
I know because it was still in my history.
I don’t remember looking for it again.
It was simply there.
Open.
Waiting.
I stared at the screen for a few seconds.
Nothing special.
A conversation.
People talking about rules.
Permissions.
Protocols.
Things that, in theory, have nothing to do with me.
And yet I kept reading.
The strange thing is that I wasn’t looking for arousal.
I wasn’t even looking for fantasy.
I was looking for something else.
It took me several days to find the word.
Dependence.
And I’m embarrassed to write it.
Because it sounds worse when it’s written down.
I wasn’t interested only in what was happening.
I was interested in the feeling of depending on something outside myself.
Waiting.
Receiving permission.
Not deciding.
Someone saying yes.
Someone saying no.
And for a few minutes the responsibility no longer belonging to me.
The first time I thought that, I closed the laptop.
Too quickly.
As if the gesture could erase the idea.
It didn’t.
The idea remained.
Waiting.
The next day I found myself thinking about it while making coffee.
I wasn’t reading anything.
The coffee machine made the same small noise it always makes.
The kitchen smelled exactly the same.
And still it appeared.
The question.
Not what I was reading.
Not what it meant.
But why I kept returning.
That’s the uncomfortable part.
Because the more I read, the less interested I become in the details.
I start becoming interested in the spaces between them.
The waiting.
The anticipation.
The permission.
The delegation.
As if the real center of all this wasn’t doing something.
But no longer having to decide it.
A few days ago I found a note I had written months earlier.
A single sentence.
I didn’t remember writing it.
It said:
“It must be exhausting to decide everything all the time.”
Nothing else.
No context.
No explanation.
Just that.
I stared at it for a long time.
Because it felt like it had been written by someone who already knew something.
Someone who had arrived before me.
And lately that feeling keeps returning.
The feeling of arriving late.
Late to an idea.
Late to a question.
Late even to certain parts of myself.
Sometimes I think I’m researching a dynamic.
Other times I suspect I’m researching why that dynamic finds me so easily.
The difference seems small.
It isn’t.
The room is silent.
Dust drifts through the monitor’s light.
An empty cup on the desk.
Two tabs open that I could swear I already closed.
I look at the time.
Then I look again.
I don’t know why.
I feel like I’m checking something.
I don’t know what.
I need to move my neck.
I’m not moving it.
The strange thing is something else.
I don’t remember when that sentence appeared.
I only remember arriving afterward.
My neck I am not moving…
