I don’t remember exactly when it started.
That’s the part that bothers me most.
Because I would like to point to a specific moment.
A page.
A sentence.
A video.
Something.
I want to be able to say:
“Here.”
But that place doesn’t exist.
Or if it does, I arrived too late.
The only thing I remember is an ordinary night.
I was reading.
Nothing strange.
Nothing particularly intense.
It wasn’t even explicit material.
It was a long discussion about obedience.
About control.
About people who found a strange kind of peace in handing certain decisions to someone else.
And I thought it was ridiculous.
I genuinely remember thinking that.
Ridiculous.
Absurd.
A little disturbing.
I closed the tab.
Went to sleep.
The next morning I opened it again.
That’s all.
It doesn’t sound important.
Yet I still remember it.
Because I don’t remember making that decision.
The tab was already there.
Open.
As if it had remained awake all night.
Waiting for me.
For weeks something similar happened.
I read.
Closed it.
Came back.
Read more.
Closed it again.
Returned once more.
Never with the feeling of entering.
Always with the feeling of returning.
And that was strange.
Because returning implies you’ve been there before.
One afternoon I caught myself searching for terms I had never intended to search for.
I don’t even remember typing them.
I only remember seeing them already written.
As if curiosity had arrived a few seconds before I did.
That embarrasses me a little.
Not the curiosity.
The ease.
The speed.
How quickly part of me became interested.
How quickly it stopped feeling unusual.
There is something uncomfortable about discovering that certain questions were simply waiting for permission to exist.
And worse:
nobody ever gave them permission.
The room where I read is small.
Nothing special.
A desk.
A chair.
A lamp.
A window facing another building.
For months I thought everything was happening inside my head.
Until a ridiculous anomaly appeared.
A mark on the desk.
Small.
White.
As if someone had dragged a fingernail across the surface.
I noticed it one night while reading.
Looked at it for a few seconds.
The next day it was still there.
The day after that too.
Nothing strange.
Desks get scratched.
But a week later I realized something.
I couldn’t remember discovering it.
I remembered knowing it.
As if I had seen it much earlier.
As if I had forgotten the exact moment it appeared.
That feeling stayed with me for days.
Because it was beginning to resemble what was happening with everything else.
I wasn’t finding anything new.
I was recognizing things.
That’s worse.
Much worse.
Because if you discover something, you can still walk away.
But if you recognize something…
what do you do with that?
Curiosity slowly mixed with something else.
I don’t know whether it was excitement.
I don’t know whether it was fear.
Maybe both.
There were ridiculous moments.
Small moments.
I would read a description of authority.
Of trust.
Of surrender.
And feel a brief shock.
Instantaneous.
Then close the text.
Stand up.
Walk into the kitchen.
Open the refrigerator.
Try to think about something else.
As if I had just been caught doing something embarrassing.
Even though I was completely alone.
That bothers me too.
The number of times I looked around to make sure nobody could see what I was reading.
The empty room.
The closed door.
The silent apartment.
And still that feeling.
As if someone could be watching from an impossible distance.
As if shame did not require witnesses.
There is a contradiction I never understood.
I thought attraction appeared when a fantasy convinced you.
That wasn’t what happened.
The attraction appeared when it stopped convincing me.
When it started making me uncomfortable.
When questions appeared that I couldn’t answer.
Why do I keep reading?
Why do I keep coming back?
Why am I so interested in something I haven’t even experienced yet?
I had no answers.
I suspect the answers arrived much later.
And curiosity had already begun working before them.
Like a machine running quietly behind a wall.
There is a rule I still can’t remove from my mind.
I don’t know when I invented it.
Or when I learned it.
Maybe those are the same thing.
The rule says:
Nothing appears for the first time. There is only the moment you recognize it.
I hate that sentence.
Because it explains too much.
And because every time I return to those texts I feel exactly that.
Not the sensation of approaching something.
The sensation of arriving late.
As if the mechanism had already started.
As if part of me had begun walking before I did.
Before the excitement.
Before the fantasy.
Before the decision itself.
Last night something stupid happened.
I was rereading old notes.
Nothing important.
Highlights.
Fragments.
Ideas.
Then I found a sentence marked in the margin.
I didn’t remember marking it.
Yet I immediately recognized the pressure I had felt when reading it.
That would be normal.
The strange thing is something else.
The sentence was on a page I would swear I had never read.
I stared at the book for several minutes.
Then closed it.
Opened it again.
The mark was still there.
I don’t know what disturbs me more.
That I forgot reading it.
Or that part of me seems to remember it perfectly.
Today I tried to step away from all of this.
I went outside.
Walked.
Talked to people.
Did normal things.
But when I came home I looked directly at the desk.
Without thinking.
Searching for the small white mark.
It was still there.
The room was still the same.
The chair was still the same.
The lamp was still the same.
The only difference was the feeling that something had been waiting for me for far too long.
And I’m no longer sure whether that waiting exists in the future.
Or in the past.
A few minutes ago I placed my hand on the desk.
Directly over the mark.
I wanted to check something.
I don’t know what.
The surface was cold.
Completely ordinary.
But for a second I had the impression that my hand had been there before.
Long before.
As if I were repeating a gesture.
As if curiosity were not a direction.
But a memory.
And now I can’t stop looking at that mark.
Because I’m starting to suspect it never appeared.
What appeared was the memory of having seen it.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
