Before the explanation begins

By Elira Venn

An imagined scene.

Originally published: 2026-10-03

I am still holding my keys when the question comes from the kitchen.

“Did you get the bread?”

My fingers close around the metal. The bag on my shoulder slides a little, and I pull it back into place. Before I have put anything down, I am arranging an explanation. There was a call. The shop was crowded. I had already remembered three other things.

I haven't said no yet.

The person in the kitchen is looking into a cupboard. I can see one hand resting on its open door. I have heard a question about bread and, somewhere inside it, another question: How could you forget?

I don't know whether that second question belongs to this evening.

There may have been impatience in the voice. There may only have been the practical problem of what to put beside the soup. I am tired enough for either to sound plausible. The pressure in my jaw tells me that I am tense. It cannot tell me what someone else meant.

Still, my explanation is ready. It has the familiar shape of explanations I have given before: detailed, reasonable, a little faster than the conversation around it. I want the whole day understood before the missing loaf is allowed to matter.

I notice how much work that would be. We would have to leave the kitchen and visit every hour since morning. I would need a witness to the traffic, the interrupted lunch, the list I kept in my head. Perhaps then I could say that I forgot without feeling that the forgetting had become a description of me.

The keys are uncomfortable in my hand.

I put them on the small table by the door. One falls across the others with a sound much louder than I expect. For a moment I attend to that: the metal settling, my bag against my hip, the smell of onions from the pan.

There is no calm arriving on cue. I am still irritated. Part of me wants to say that somebody else could have bought the bread.

That may be a conversation worth having. I don't have to lose it just because I have noticed my jaw. Nor does noticing require me to make the other person's evening easier at the expense of my own. There are chores here, and expectations, and perhaps things we have left unsaid.

But I haven't heard enough to know which conversation we are having.

I could ask. The possibility feels almost awkward beside the explanation I have prepared. A question would leave room for an answer I have not already rehearsed.

“Were you counting on it for dinner?”

“Yes. But there are potatoes.”

The cupboard closes.

I can feel how quickly I want to turn this into reassurance. Everything is fine. I was silly to react. Now I should stop reacting.

That is another demand, arriving before I have taken off my coat.

The evening can stay less settled than that. The bread is missing. I am tired. There may still be something to say about who remembers what. None of these details has to explain all the others.

NEDS, the Neuro-Entity Dynamics System, gives me a more particular question to bring to this imagined kitchen: what is arriving together? Its proposed ‘neuro-entity’ is a working configuration of emotion, memory, belief, bodily activation, protective intention, and learned behavior. The idea is to consider how these elements organize a response, while leaving the account open to correction. [1]

Here I can notice irritation, pressure in my jaw, the expectation of being judged, and the explanation already forming. I want the day understood before the forgotten bread becomes a verdict about me. The feeling, meaning, and impulse can be examined together without deciding which explains the others. No remembered event is supplied by this scene.

One evening would not establish a recurring configuration. If this response kept appearing, I could look for what gathers around it and what differs on evenings when it does not. The scene illustrates that NEDS question; it cannot validate the proposed construct. The actual question from the kitchen still needs an answer. My jaw cannot provide it.

I take off my coat. The sleeve catches on my watch, and for a few seconds that is the entire task.

“I forgot,” I say.

The words feel exposed without their supporting account. My jaw has not entirely loosened. I am listening for disappointment, and I know that I am listening for it.

There could still be an explanation. There could be a disagreement. A pause does not decide how the rest of an evening will go.

For now, the person at the counter moves the chopping board to make room. I put my bag on a chair.

“Shall I wash the potatoes?”

There is water running before the answer comes.

Related reading

[1] Kržić, M. (2026). From Structural Limits to a Testable Response, sections 5, 7 and 7.1.

About NEDS

NEDS ethics and professional boundaries

Editorial note

Elira Venn is a virtual editorial persona of NEDS Institute. This AI-generated essay uses an imagined first-person scene; it is not a personal testimony or a report of treatment.

Originally published on the NEDS Institute wiki.

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