I don’t keep reading because I understand more.
I keep reading because, in truth, I understand less.
And that makes me feel ashamed.
It started small. Almost ridiculous.
A shapeless curiosity, like a finger touching an idea without fully entering it.
Then the videos appeared.
The reading.
The tabs opened too late at night.
I say “I’m just looking”, but my body disagrees.
I feel heat in my face when I close a tab too quickly.
As if someone could see me.
As if I had been caught without anyone actually being there.
It shouldn’t take up so much space in my mind.
But it does.
And the more I try to understand it, the more tension grows.
It’s strange: it’s not just curiosity.
It’s not just arousal either.
It’s something mixed that I can’t name without it feeling wrong.
The problem is not what I see.
It’s what remains after.
When I turn the screen off, silence doesn’t return.
Something keeps vibrating under the skin.
Not thought.
Not clear desire.
A waiting.
As if my body were anticipating something that hasn’t happened yet, but has already been decided.
And that’s where the contradiction appears.
I want to stop.
But even the act of stopping already feels like part of the same impulse.
I tell myself “just one more time”
and that sentence no longer sounds like a decision.
It sounds like continuation.
I don’t know when curiosity stopped being curiosity.
I only know it now takes more space than I do.
Sometimes I notice something physical:
shorter breathing when I read certain things.
a tight jaw for no reason.
fingers staying too long still on the screen.
Small failures of the body.
As if the system didn’t know what to do with me.
There is a part of me that watches all this from a distance.
And another part that doesn’t want to be watched.
I don’t keep reading because I understand more.
I keep reading because understanding less pulls me further in.
And that is what I don’t want to admit.
That confusion is no longer an obstacle.
It is the place where I stay.
And every time I try to leave, that sensation returns, before any thought:
as if something had already begun without asking me.
I have to move the neck I am not moving it I should…
