I don't even know why I'm typing this out. Feels stupid. Like, who cares, right? But it's been buzzing in my head for days, feels like a fly I can't swat. And it’s not just days, it’s… years? Since I was little, I guess. My dad, he was in the army, and it was always about… keeping things tight. No complaining. No feelings. Just get the job done. That’s how it was. So now, with my girlfriend, Chloe. She’s real sweet, you know? Like, super nice. We’ve been together for almost two years, which is a long time for me. Longer than anyone else. And she talks about, like, us getting a place together. Soon. Or, like, what we’re gonna do next summer. And then she’ll say stuff about how she feels, or ask me how *I* feel about something. And my brain just… shuts down. It’s like a wall comes up. Last night was the worst. We were watching a movie, just chilling on the couch, and she starts talking about her friend who just moved in with her boyfriend. And Chloe, she turns to me, real soft, and says, “Wouldn’t that be nice? To have our own place, just ours?” And my chest got tight. Like, real tight. I could feel my heart going thump-thump-thump against my ribs. And I didn't say anything for a sec, just stared at the TV. It was some dumb sci-fi thing, space battles. Then, before I even knew I was doing it, I just started talking about my project at school. This coding thing we’re doing for an app. About how the API isn’t integrating right, and I have to debug this whole section of code. And how hard it is to get it to talk to the database. I just kept talking, faster and faster, about frameworks and dependencies and all that crap. Like, it just flowed out of me. It was like I couldn’t stop. Chloe, she just kinda… deflated. I saw it. Her shoulders slumped a little. And she just looked at me, not even mad, just… sad. Like, really, really sad. And she didn't say anything, just turned back to the TV. And the silence after I stopped talking, it was so LOUD. It felt like a physical thing, pressing on me. I wanted to disappear. I wanted the floor to swallow me up. And then later, she went to bed, and I just stayed on the couch. Staring at the dark screen. And it hit me, real hard, what I did. It’s not the first time. It happens whenever she tries to talk about… us. About feelings. About *the future*. I always just throw up a distraction. A work project, a technical problem, anything that’s not about me and her and what’s actually happening. Like a coward. My dad would always say, “Keep your head down, boy. Focus on the mission. Emotions just get in the way.” And I guess that’s just… stuck in me. Like a bad chip in my brain. Because it feels like if I talk about that stuff, about what’s inside, it’s gonna break me. Like I’ll fall apart. Or I’ll mess it up. And I don’t know how to stop. It just comes out. And now I’m here, typing this, feeling like the biggest piece of crap. Because I can see her face. That sad face. And I know I hurt her. And I just don’t know how to fix it. Or if I even *can* fix it. I’m just… stuck. Like that broken code. And I don't know the debug for this. It feels like the whole world is too big, and I'm just too small and broken to deal with it. I just want to go back to being a kid sometimes. Before all this stuff got complicated.