I don’t think the thing that unsettles me is the neck.
For a long time, I thought it was.
I thought the fascination lived in the image itself, in the gesture, in the visual intensity of something that should have repelled me.
That explanation was easy.
Comfortable.
Clean.
But if I’m honest, what follows me isn’t the image.
It’s everything that happens before it.
I’m embarrassed to write this because I’m still not sure I understand it.
I remember the first time I came across something related to it.
I didn’t feel revelation.
I didn’t feel need.
I wasn’t even particularly drawn to it.
What I felt was a question.
Nothing more.
A strange question that should have disappeared within minutes.
But it didn’t.
And that was the strange part.
For weeks I didn’t think about it constantly.
It simply returned now and then.
Like an unpleasant melody that keeps appearing in the background while you’re doing something else.
I kept living my life.
Working.
Reading.
Talking to people.
Laughing.
And then, without any obvious reason, I would remember that image.
Not because I wanted to.
Because it was there.
Eventually I stopped asking why it kept returning.
I started asking why it wouldn’t leave.
The difference sounds small.
For me, it changed everything.
There is one moment I’ve never told anyone about.
I was alone one evening.
I’d just finished reading something related to the subject and closed the screen feeling uncomfortable.
Not aroused.
Uncomfortable.
I remember that feeling perfectly.
I looked at my reflection in a dark window and thought:
“This doesn’t make sense.”
It wasn’t dramatic.
It was an honest observation.
Part of me remained convinced that none of this fit the person I believed myself to be.
And another part was clearly interested.
Both existed at the same time.
Both argued.
Both lost.
As time passed, something even stranger happened.
The curiosity changed shape.
At first I wanted to understand what I was seeing.
Then I wanted to understand why other people were interested.
Then I wanted to understand why I was still interested.
At some point I lost track of what the original question had been.
That is what frightens me most.
Not the content.
Not the images.
Not the fantasies.
The way something can quietly settle inside your mind and rearrange the space.
As if it moves the furniture when you’re not looking.
As if every visit leaves something behind.
An object.
A mark.
A little less distance.
Some days I think I’ve moved past it.
Then something insignificant appears.
A sentence.
A comment.
A scene in a film that has nothing to do with it.
And I feel that immediate recognition.
That small click.
That feeling of, “oh, this again.”
It isn’t exactly pleasure.
It isn’t exactly suffering.
It’s familiarity.
And sometimes familiarity is more powerful than either.
The worst part is that I still don’t know what it means.
I’d like to write an elegant ending.
To say I finally understood where all of this came from.
That I found the psychological explanation.
That I discovered an answer.
But that wouldn’t be true.
All I know is that something that began as a small curiosity ended up occupying entire rooms inside my head.
And there are still moments when I find myself looking at that part of me with the same confusion I felt the first time.
As if it were still a stranger.
As if I were still waiting for someone to explain why I keep looking toward that closed door.
And why part of me still wants to know what’s behind it.
My neck I am not moving it…
