There is something I don’t really know how to explain without it sounding strange.
But I’m going to try anyway.
Because it keeps coming back to me.
For a long time I thought pain was the important part.
That it was the center of it all.
The strong idea.
The clear image.
But now I’m not so sure.
What confuses me is something else.
When I imagine those situations, I don’t actually think about pain.
I think about the moment just before.
That strange second where nothing has happened yet, but you’re no longer completely “normal.”
As if something has shifted inside you.
Without you being able to point at exactly what.
And then, when something intense happens, what actually occurs is not what I expected.
It’s not “this controls me.”
It’s not “I lose control.”
It’s stranger than that.
It’s like suddenly I become aware of everything again.
The body.
The breathing.
The weight of being in a body.
Things that are usually not in the foreground.
And that unsettles me.
Because I thought all of this was about going further.
About enduring more.
About crossing a limit.
But sometimes it feels like the opposite.
As if the limit is not something you cross.
But something that returns you.
Back to yourself.
And I didn’t expect that.
There is something uncomfortable in that idea.
Because it breaks the fantasy you start with.
The fantasy of fading out a little.
Of thinking less.
Of analyzing everything less.
But in practice it doesn’t work like that.
In practice, what appears is something else.
Too much awareness.
Too much body.
Too much “me” all at once.
And that’s what I struggle to put into words.
Because I don’t really know what it means.
Sometimes I think the problem isn’t what happens.
But what it leaves behind.
A kind of excess of reality.
As if something reminds you too strongly that you are there.
That you are you.
And that you can’t step outside of that as easily as you thought.
That’s what I don’t say out loud.
Because it doesn’t sound like what I expected it to sound like.
It’s not extreme.
It’s not clear.
It’s not a finished story.
It’s something more confused than that.
And that’s why it stays.
Circling.
Not quite leaving.
I have to move the neck…
