I don’t remember what I was looking for.
That’s one of the things that bothers me most.
I would like to point to a specific moment.
A sentence.
An image.
An explanation.
Something.
But the more I try to find the beginning, the further it moves away.
At first I was only reading.
That’s what I told myself.
Articles.
Forums.
Other people’s experiences.
Nothing more.
The curiosity seemed harmless.
Almost intellectual.
I was interested in the dynamics.
The psychology.
The reasons.
I wasn’t interested in participating.
At least that’s what I thought.
The strange thing was how often I came back.
Not because I had found something new.
But because I needed to check something.
I still don’t know what.
I would close a page.
An hour later I would open it again.
Not to read it.
Just to see it.
As if I needed proof that it was still there.
The screen lit the dust floating above my desk.
That was all.
Dust.
A cold cup of coffee.
The same page.
The same feeling.
That was the first crack.
I wasn’t interested only in what I was reading.
I was interested in what it did to me.
That was harder to admit.
Much harder.
Because it stopped being about information.
It became about structure.
Waiting.
Receiving.
Not deciding.
I discovered that some stories fascinated me less because of what happened and more because of the way someone handed part of their decisions to another person.
It feels strange to write that.
It still does.
Because it doesn’t fit the image I had of myself.
I always thought of myself as independent.
Too independent, maybe.
And yet I kept returning to the same texts.
I wasn’t looking for scenes.
I wasn’t looking for practices.
I was looking for something harder to name.
Relief.
The possibility of not carrying everything alone.
The idea embarrassed me more than it should have.
I remember closing my laptop abruptly.
As if someone had walked into the room.
As if I had been caught.
But I was alone.
Completely alone.
That was the worst part.
There was nobody to hide it from.
Except myself.
For a few days I stopped reading.
Or at least I tried to.
The first night was easy.
The second too.
On the third, I caught myself thinking about it while washing a glass.
Not about a scene.
Not about a person.
About a feeling.
The feeling of receiving a clear direction.
Of not having to negotiate every step.
Of not being responsible for everything.
The glass was still in my hand.
The water was still running.
And I stopped moving.
Only for a few seconds.
I don’t know why I remember that moment.
But I do.
Because that was when a different question appeared.
It was no longer:
“Why am I interested in this?”
It became:
“Why do I keep coming back?”
The difference seems small.
It isn’t.
The first question is about a subject.
The second is about me.
And from that point on, things changed.
I started watching my own returns.
Open tabs.
Browser history.
The times of day when I searched again.
As if I were investigating someone else.
As if a habit had developed using my own hands.
Sometimes I told myself it was simple curiosity.
And maybe that was true.
But curiosity usually fades when it finds answers.
Mine seemed to feed on them.
Every explanation created another check.
Every check created another return.
Every return seemed to happen a few minutes before I consciously decided to make it.
That embarrasses me too.
Because I don’t know when it stopped being a search.
And started feeling like a wait.
The room was silent.
The screen was glowing.
Dust drifted slowly through the light.
Nothing else.
And yet I had the feeling that something had already begun.
Not a practice.
Not a relationship.
Not even a decision.
Something smaller.
Which is why it is harder to find.
Maybe it started the first time I felt relief imagining that someone else decided for me, just for a moment.
Or maybe it started earlier.
Maybe I keep looking for that instant because I arrived too late.
Like always.
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.
My neck I am not moving it…
