I don’t think I like being submissive.
If someone asked me directly, I would probably say no.
Too many things become smaller.
Too many things stop belonging to me.
And yet there are ridiculous moments.
Moments that don’t matter.
Moments that keep coming back.
I’m standing in line at a grocery store.
Someone in front of me leaves their cart sideways.
Nothing special.
But suddenly I remember what it felt like to wait for an instruction that never came.
Not the instruction.
The waiting.
That’s what comes back.
The waiting.
And it annoys me that it does.
Because I wasn’t thinking about that.
I was trying to decide between two brands of coffee.
But there it is again.
Like a song playing faintly from another apartment.
I don’t remember exactly when this started.
I think it was easier to recognize in the beginning.
Now it hides inside small things.
The rectangular shadow of a half-open door.
An empty chair.
The sound of footsteps moving away down a hallway.
Sometimes a notification that never arrives.
Those are the worst.
The absences.
Not the presences.
I thought the difficult part would be enduring the weight of the process.
It isn’t.
The difficult part is discovering how much space it occupies afterward.
Because even when I’m not there, I keep arranging things around it.
Not consciously.
That would be easier.
It happens by itself.
As if some part of my mind learned a different way to arrange the furniture.
There are absurd details.
The way I look at the clock when I’m waiting for something.
The way I leave a conversation open for a few extra seconds before closing it.
The habit of remaining still when I could already move.
I don’t know why I do that.
Most of the time I don’t even notice immediately.
First it happens.
Then I realize it.
Then I try to convince myself it means nothing.
Sometimes that works.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
The strangest thing is that I’m not looking for pleasure.
Not even when I think about him.
That’s not what this is.
If it were pleasure, it would be easy to understand.
It would be a simple story.
But it isn’t.
What comes back is something much less elegant.
The feeling of being placed somewhere specific.
Of not having to decide for a moment.
Of existing only as a presence.
That should bother me more.
It really should.
Because part of me resists the idea.
Part of me keeps insisting that I should want something else.
And maybe I do.
I probably do.
But then I remember something insignificant.
The way I once sat looking at a corner of a room for several minutes.
Not because there was anything interesting there.
There was a small mark in the paint.
Barely visible.
That was all.
And yet I didn’t want to look anywhere else.
Not because I was forced to.
But because I no longer needed to choose.
I think about that far more often than I should.
It’s stupid.
But I keep remembering that mark on the wall.
Not the day.
Not the conversation.
Not the words.
Just the mark.
And the feeling of remaining.
Nothing else.
Simply remaining.
The neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
