You tell yourself it’s her presence you crave. The sound of her voice, the cut of her words, the way even silence seems sharper when it’s hers. But you’re lying to yourself. It isn’t the contact that consumes you.
It’s the absence.
Because when she’s gone — when the screen stays blank, when your messages go unanswered, when the transaction clears and you’re met with nothing — that’s when the ache begins to bloom. That’s when you start obsessing. Not over what you’ve already given, but what you haven’t. What you should have sent. What might have made the silence shorter, the void smaller, the punishment lighter.
But you don’t want mercy.
You want the ache.
You want the distance.
You want her close enough to burn through your screen — and far enough to remind you you’re not even close to worthy.
You want to feel her disinterest as judgment. Her quiet as correction. Her absence as assignment.
Because this isn’t a game of attention. It’s a system of extraction — one she doesn’t even need to explain. You already know the rules. When she’s gone, you send. When you feel ignored, you try harder. When you feel unworthy, you spend more. Not because she told you to — but because her silence does more damage than her demands ever could.
You find yourself working to earn nothing. And that nothing becomes everything.
Because that’s what she offers: the possibility that you might one day be noticed again. That your next tribute might move the scale, shift the balance, tip the silence. You don’t pay for praise. You pay for proximity. For the illusion of it. For the brief, flickering hope that this time, maybe, she’ll see you.
But she does see you.
She sees your panic. Your pathetic need. Your attempt to buy your way into her orbit. She sees it all — and she lets you stew in it. Lets you pay again and again in the hope that maybe, just maybe, this time you’ll be seen differently.
You won’t.
Because she’s engineered your need to grow in her absence. That’s the brilliance of it. You don’t need her to touch you, to speak to you, to acknowledge you. You just need her to exist — out of reach. Above you. Ahead of you.
Untouchable.
And so the craving deepens. Not because she’s there — but because she’s not. Because she could appear at any moment, but hasn’t. Because she might read your message, but hasn’t. Because she knows you sent — and said nothing.
And that, more than any praise, is what makes you pay again.
Not to be welcomed.
To be permitted.
And you’re not there yet.
You know you’re not.
But maybe the next transfer will be enough.
Maybe the next depletion will buy you the right to hope.
And maybe she’ll still say nothing at all.