I feel like a real idiot writing this. (Why am I even doing this? Nobody cares.) But I can’t sleep. Again. It’s my partner. Alex. We’ve been together… a while. Like, seven years. My kids are grown, out of the house. His too. My parents are getting old, back home. It’s a lot. I think about them all the time. Sending money. Calling. My mom especially, she still asks me if I’m married yet, like I’m still 20. (What would she say about Alex? I don’t even know.) So Alex. We live in separate places. Always have. It was fine, convenient, for years. We’re both busy, right? Software. It’s demanding. Always something. New project. New client. Deadlines. I get it. I’m the same. But lately… I don't know. I started thinking about us living together. Like, actually living together. It’s what you do, eventually. My cousin Rina, she got married last year. Her mom called me, asking when it would be my turn. Again. It just feels… like time. For something more. Permanent. I tried to bring it up. Last week. We were at his place. Having dinner. Thai food. He loves the red curry. I made it special for him. We were talking about something stupid, a movie, and then I just... said it. “What do you think about us finding a place together?” I asked. Just like that. He got quiet. Like, REAL quiet. He stared at his plate. Then he cleared his throat. “Oh, hey, I was meaning to tell you,” he said. “We got approved for that new cloud migration project. It’s HUGE. Like, a total game-changer for the company. We’ll be using all new APIs, open source stuff, really pushing the envelope on microservices architecture.” And then he just kept going. For like, ten minutes. About his project. About the tech. How exciting it was. How complex. I just sat there. Eating my curry. It got cold. I didn’t say anything else about moving in. (What was I supposed to say?) It happened again, a few days later. We were talking on the phone. I was telling him how I felt kind of… lonely. Just. Empty sometimes. My youngest, Maya, she’s in college now. I miss her. My parents, they’re so far. I just wanted to talk about it. Tell him I was feeling a bit down. He listened. For a bit. Then he started in. “You know, that reminds me of this new debugging tool we’re implementing,” he said. “It’s supposed to improve our log analysis by, like, 30 percent. Total efficiency boost. We’re integrating it with our CI/CD pipeline, it’s going to streamline everything.” And on and on. He just… switched. Right to work. Like a reflex. It’s always like this. Future plans? My feelings? He just… diverts. To his projects. To the technical stuff. It’s his comfort zone, I guess. It’s like a wall. A firewall. (I shouldn’t make jokes. This isn’t funny.) I feel stupid for even trying. For even wanting something more. Maybe I’m asking too much. Maybe I should just be happy with what we have. But what is that, really? Just… parallel lives. Connected by Thai food and the occasional movie. (It hurts to think that.) I just wish he’d TALK to me. About US. Not about the latest damn software update. I’m tired. And I’m alone in this. (I hate feeling this way.)