For me, the problem has never been the pain.
Nor the discipline.
Not even the idea of obedience.
If it were any of those things, I could explain it.
I could point to a cause.
I could build a reasonable theory and move on.
What I can’t explain is something else.
The way it keeps returning.
Because I don’t want to think about him.
And yet he appears.
At ridiculous moments.
While waiting for an elevator.
While reading something completely unrelated.
While someone is talking and I’m pretending to listen.
Suddenly the image returns.
Not a complete scene.
Never a complete scene.
Only fragments.
The way he remained still before doing something.
The way he never seemed rushed.
The feeling that he observed things longer than necessary.
And then something happens that deeply irritates me.
I start wondering what he would have done.
Not because I need an answer.
Not because I would follow it.
Only because my mind goes there before I can stop it.
And I hate that.
Or at least I think I hate it.
Because the more I try to push it away, the sharper it becomes.
Entire days fade into vagueness.
Yet I can remember tiny details that should not matter at all.
The exact position of a chair.
The way he placed an object on a table.
A silence that lasted too long.
A pause nobody else would have noticed.
The worst part is that these memories never feel finished.
They feel like processes still running.
As if something started and never truly ended.
As if part of me is still waiting for something.
Not an order.
Not a correction.
Not even approval.
Something harder to name.
Continuation.
That is what returns again and again.
The idea of remaining in front of him while the process continues.
Doing nothing.
Saying nothing.
Not fully understanding what is happening.
Simply remaining.
And waiting.
There is something deeply uncomfortable about admitting it.
Because I have never liked thinking of myself as submissive.
Even now I dislike the word.
It doesn’t fit.
It explains nothing.
In fact, the more I try to use it, the less sense it makes.
Because what obsesses me is not surrender.
It is remaining.
Staying a little longer.
Not leaving the room yet.
Not interrupting something that feels as though it is slowly approaching a conclusion that never quite arrives.
Sometimes I think the entire obsession begins there.
Not in him.
Not in me.
But in that space between us where something still remains unfinished.
A review.
An adjustment.
A detail that has not yet been noticed.
And as long as that possibility exists, my attention keeps returning.
Like a compass needle finding the same direction every time.
Even when I try to pull it away.
Even when it embarrasses me.
Even when I don’t understand it.
In the end, what occupies my mind is not the idea of his authority.
It is something much smaller and much more persistent.
The image of still being there when everything seems finished.
Discovering that it is not finished yet.
And feeling, with a strange mixture of discomfort and relief, that there is still a little more waiting left.
Because waiting is no longer the obstacle.
A long time ago, it became the part I find hardest to leave behind.
The neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
