My neck isn’t moving.
It should be.
There is no reason for me to still be sitting here.
The screen is already dark.
I’m not even reading anymore.
A few minutes ago I told myself I was going to bed.
I remember that clearly.
So why am I still here?
The empty cup is still on the desk.
There is a dried ring of coffee along the rim.
I don’t remember the last time I touched it.
That keeps happening more often.
Not forgetting important things.
Forgetting small moments.
The exact moment I decided to come back.
The exact moment I opened another tab.
The exact moment I thought:
just five more minutes.
I look at my browser history.
I don’t know why.
I already know what I’m going to find.
The same searches.
The same words.
The same pages.
Nothing new.
That’s what unsettles me most.
If I were discovering something different every day, it would make sense.
But I’m not.
I keep returning to the same things.
As if I’m checking that they’re still there.
As if I need them to still be there.
And I don’t understand why.
A few weeks ago I thought I was looking for information.
Now I’m not so sure.
Information has a limit.
You learn it.
You understand it.
You file it away.
This doesn’t work like that.
This seems to grow every time I try to understand it.
Sometimes I tell myself it’s simple curiosity.
And for a few seconds I believe it.
Then I remember something.
Not the practices.
Not the images.
Not the details.
The feeling.
That’s what comes back.
The feeling of reading someone describe waiting for an instruction.
And noticing something that feels dangerously close to relief.
It’s a terrible word.
Relief.
Because it implies there was a weight before.
And I don’t know what that weight was.
Or maybe I do.
Maybe it’s the constant need to decide.
To choose.
To correct.
To anticipate.
To be responsible.
Maybe that’s it.
Maybe it isn’t.
The crack near the baseboard is still there.
I look at it again.
It hasn’t changed.
That should be reassuring.
It isn’t.
Because I’m starting to suspect that I never came back to check the pages.
I came back to check myself.
To see whether I still reacted the same way.
To see whether the feeling was still there.
To see whether I still felt that small pull whenever I read certain sentences.
And it’s always there.
Not stronger.
Not weaker.
Just there.
Waiting.
As if it arrived before I did.
I need to move my neck.
I’m not moving it.
The strange thing is that I no longer know whether I’m avoiding the movement.
Or whether I’ve spent the last few minutes waiting for permission to make it.
And that’s exactly what I didn’t want to discover.
There is something I rarely admit.
Even to myself.
Because it sounds worse when it appears in a complete sentence.
For a long time I thought I was interested in the practices.
The details.
The techniques.
The risks.
The explanations.
That’s what I told myself.
And maybe, at first, it was true.
Then I started noticing something strange.
I would read about a specific topic.
Close the page.
And a few hours later I would come back.
Not to learn something new.
Not to answer a question.
I came back to check a feeling.
That should have made me stop.
It didn’t.
I remember one particularly ridiculous night.
The computer was still on.
The room was dark.
Dust floated in front of the screen.
Nothing else.
No music.
No videos.
Nothing.
Just text.
And yet I couldn’t stop reading.
The strange thing was that I wasn’t fascinated by what was happening in those stories.
I was fascinated by the structure.
The relationship.
The shape of it.
Waiting.
Receiving permission.
Trusting.
Depending.
It wasn’t the lack of air.
It was the idea that something so automatic could stop belonging entirely to you for a moment.
And I’m embarrassed to write that.
Because it doesn’t fit the image I have of myself.
I’ve always thought of myself as someone who likes control.
Planning.
Understanding.
Anticipating.
Which is why it felt so uncomfortable to discover that part of me seemed fascinated by the opposite.
Not the danger.
Not the intensity.
The delegation.
That was what kept bringing me back.
Delegation.
The possibility of not being responsible for a few seconds.
Of not having to decide.
Of not having to carry everything.
I remember closing one tab.
Opening another.
Closing that one too.
Getting up for a glass of water would have been easier.
But I stayed there.
Looking at the same screen.
Returning to the same sentences.
As if I were trying to find something I had already read.
Or something I had never read at all.
I’m not sure which possibility unsettles me more.
Sometimes I thought the curiosity would disappear.
That understanding it would be enough.
But the opposite happened.
Every explanation created another question.
And the new question wasn’t about the practice.
It was about me.
Why does this idea calm me?
Why do I come back?
Why do I keep checking?
The cup was still on the desk.
Empty.
The same cup as always.
I remember noticing a small crack near the baseboard.
I don’t know why.
I just looked at it.
And suddenly I had the feeling that I had been trying to answer the wrong question for weeks.
It wasn’t:
“Why does this exist?”
It was:
“Why can’t I stop thinking about it?”
The difference seemed small.
It wasn’t.
Because the first question was about the world.
The second was about me.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.
I need to move my neck.
I’m not moving it.
The strange thing is that the thought of moving it seems to have arrived afterward.
Like so many other things.
My neck I am not moving it…
