There is something deeply embarrassing about discovering that obsession does not appear during important moments.
It appears during useless ones.
Not when I think about him.
When I do not want to think about him.
This morning, for example.
I woke a few seconds before the alarm.
I was not dreaming about anything related.
I do not even remember the dream.
The only thing I remember is opening my eyes and thinking, for a fraction of a second, that I needed to check something.
I did not know what.
Only that I needed to check it.
And before I had even sat up, it was already there.
The idea.
The presence.
The question.
Not an image.
Not a memory.
Something worse.
The feeling that part of me had been awake much longer.
Waiting.
Later, while brushing my teeth, it happened again.
I watched the foam gathering in the sink.
A completely useless observation.
And suddenly I caught myself wondering what he would think about my ridiculous habit of letting the water run too long.
It makes no sense.
He was not there.
He has never seen that sink.
And yet he appeared.
The way he always does.
Not as a person.
As a standard.
As a method of measuring things.
Sometimes I think that is what embarrasses me most.
Not that he occupies my thoughts.
But that he has begun to occupy the tools I use to think.
A few days ago I saw a stranger waiting for a bus.
She was carrying a yellow shopping bag.
That was all.
Nothing remarkable happened.
And yet I kept watching her because she seemed to be waiting with a strange kind of patience.
A motionless patience.
And while watching her I thought about him.
Not because they resembled one another.
Not because there was any connection.
My mind simply decided there was.
As if it no longer required reasons.
As if the obsession had learned to feed itself.
The more I think about it the less I understand it.
The less I understand it the more space it occupies.
The more space it occupies the harder it becomes to move away from it.
And the harder it becomes to move away from it the more embarrassed I feel.
Entire afternoons are built from details like these.
An empty cup forgotten on a table.
A video about restoring antique watches.
A man crossing a street while carrying a closed umbrella.
The shadow of a plant moving across a wall.
None of it is related.
And yet everything eventually becomes connected.
As if there were an invisible network beneath ordinary things.
And he were always waiting at the other end.
Sometimes I try to call it sadness.
But it is not sadness.
Sadness has direction.
Sadness points toward something.
This does not.
This feels more like a silent occupation.
A presence that remains after emotions disappear.
In fact, it remains when everything else has already left.
Perhaps that is why time does not help.
Time should erode.
It should wear things down.
It should reduce them.
Instead the opposite happens.
Time seems to give it more space.
More rooms.
More corridors.
More places to appear.
And sometimes I remember a line associated with the Marquis de Sade.
Not the excesses.
Not the theories.
Something much simpler.
The idea that certain human forces do not weaken when resisted.
They become refined.
And then I remember that circular mark.
It has almost vanished now.
Only a shadow remains.
An uncertain outline.
Probably nobody else would notice it.
I do.
Because I keep looking for it.
Because I keep checking whether it is still there.
Because I still move closer to the mirror with the absurd hope of finding that it has disappeared completely.
And because part of me feels disappointed whenever it looks fainter.
That is the truly humiliating part.
Not the mark.
Not the memory.
The disappointment.
The small and unconfessable disappointment.
The feeling that something is leaving.
The feeling that something remains.
Both at the same time.
And the more I try to explain it the less I understand what exactly is still here.
I only know that it is still here.
Waiting.
As though it never left.
I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
