Her birthday was in eleven days and I had nothing. Not nothing as in I hadn't bought anything yet. Nothing as in I sat in the parking lot of a mall I don't even like and realized I didn't know what to get because I didn't know her. Not really. Not in the way that matters when you're standing in a store trying to pick something that says I see you.

I know her body. I know which side of the bed she sleeps on. I know the sound she makes when she's about to fall asleep. But I don't know her favorite color. I don't know what she wanted to be before she became what she is. I don't know if she's happy. I never asked. Or I asked once and forgot because I was looking at my phone.

I scrolled through her Instagram for clues like a detective in my own relationship. Three years together and I'm reverse-engineering her personality from posts she made for strangers. She liked a picture of a bookstore in Lisbon. Does she want to go to Lisbon? Does she even like books? I should know this. I should know all of this by now.

I bought a candle. A safe, meaningless candle that smells like something vague and costs too much. The kind of gift that says I remembered the date but not the person. She smiled when she opened it and said she loved it and I believed her because believing her was easier than asking if she meant it.

What terrifies me isn't that I failed at one gift. It's that I've been in love with someone for three years and built an entire relationship on proximity and routine instead of actual knowing. I sit next to her every night. We eat dinner. We watch things. We sleep. And somewhere in all that closeness I forgot to learn who she is. Or maybe I never started.

She deserves someone who walks into a store and knows exactly what to get. Someone who doesn't need Instagram to remember what she cares about. Someone who asks questions and listens to the answers and still remembers them six months later. I want to be that person. I don't know if I can be. I don't know if the problem is me or if this is what love becomes when you stop paying attention - a warm body in a dark room, close enough to touch, too far away to know.