There is something I struggle to admit because it sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud.
It was not a sudden fall.
There was no moment when I crossed a line and said: this is who I am now.
It was much more stupid than that.
Much smaller.
It started with curiosity that seemed harmless.
One video.
Then another.
A text I found by accident.
Then a search I made because I wanted to understand why the first one had affected me so much.
I remember the feeling from those first days perfectly because it was different. There was surprise. There was excitement. There was even a certain distance.
I could close the browser window and feel like myself again.
Or at least I thought I could.
What I did not understand back then was that repetition does not work like a chain that suddenly locks around you.
It works more like a song that gets stuck in your head.
At first it appears once.
Then you notice it returning while you are doing something else.
Then it comes back when you are trying to sleep.
And one day you realize it has been living with you for weeks.
The strange thing is that I no longer remember exactly what I watched.
I remember the feeling.
I remember absurdly specific details.
The way a certain sentence was spoken.
The pause before an instruction.
The exact moment someone lowered their eyes.
But many times I cannot remember the entire video.
It is as if my memory decided to archive only the parts that embarrass me the most.
Sometimes I am working and an image appears.
Not a complete image.
A fragment.
A gesture.
An expression.
A tone of voice.
And for a few seconds I just stare at the screen because I immediately recognize where it came from.
Then I feel that awful mixture of familiarity and resistance.
Because one part of me wants to go back.
And another part of me is tired of going back.
What embarrasses me most is not the excitement.
Excitement is easy to understand.
What embarrasses me is the repetition.
The feeling of walking down the same mental path over and over again.
Knowing exactly what I am going to search for.
Recognizing thumbnails before I even read the titles.
Opening pages I swore I would never open again.
As if some part of my brain had already made the decision several minutes before I believed I was making it myself.
There are nights when I am not even excited.
That is what scares me.
I am tired.
Bored.
Anxious.
And yet I still end up there.
Repeating the same route.
Following the same tracks.
As if I were trying to recover something that was never really inside the video.
As if the search itself had become more important than whatever I am searching for.
Sometimes I wonder whether I am still chasing pleasure.
Or whether I am chasing the memory of an old pleasure that no longer exists.
Because the excitement changed too.
It used to be simple.
Now it is stranger.
More psychological.
Harder to explain.
There are things that once seemed extreme to me that barely affect me now.
And I do not know what to do with that information.
I do not know how to fit it into the image I have of myself.
I do not know whether it means something.
I do not know whether it means nothing.
I only know that it is there.
And that I am ashamed to admit it.
The hardest thing to explain is that many times I already know the ending.
I know the video.
I know the text.
I even know some of the lines by heart.
And yet I return.
As if repetition itself had become the real object of desire.
As if my brain had learned to find comfort in the very thing that makes me feel trapped.
There are moments when I close everything and feel relief.
A physical relief.
A real one.
As if I had stepped out of a room that was too small.
But other times a different feeling appears.
The feeling that I left something unfinished.
And that feeling returns hours later.
Or the next day.
Or a week later.
Exactly the same.
With the same shape.
The same voice.
The same weight.
And that is what unsettles me most.
Not the content.
Not the fantasies.
Not the videos.
But the suspicion that something inside me learned how to walk in circles.
And that some nights I can hear its footsteps before it even begins to move.
My neck I am not moving it I should…
