Yesterday didn’t end the way I expected.
After finishing dinner, I was getting ready to call it a night when our sales team reported a few issues in the product I had developed.
Thankfully, they weren’t actual bugs.
Most of the confusion came from how the feature worked. They hadn’t fully understood it, and to be fair, I realized I could have explained it more clearly as well.
So I sat back down, fixed a few things, clarified the workflow, and finally wrapped everything up.
By the time I went to bed, it was already 12:15 a.m.
Because of the late night, I decided to skip the gym this morning.
I wanted to get enough rest and, more importantly, be fresh enough to talk to my Pappa before she reached the office.
I woke up around 7:00 a.m., quickly freshened up, went downstairs, and waited for her call.
The moment she called, my morning instantly became better.
She told me everything that had happened after our conversation the previous night, and as always, we drifted from one random topic to another without even realizing how quickly time was passing.
Before long, she reached the office.
We wished each other a wonderful day and ended the call.
A little later, my colleague joined me, and we went for breakfast before returning to the room.
I had a mountain of work waiting for me, so I quickly took a shower, got ready, and headed downstairs to begin coding.
Despite being busy, there was one thing constantly on my mind.
I was waiting for lunchtime.
Not because I was hungry.
Because lunchtime meant I would get to talk to my Pappa again.
When lunchtime finally arrived, I paused my work and waited for her call.
She messaged me asking what I was doing.
I replied immediately.
Then…
Nothing.
Minutes passed.
Ten minutes.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Forty-five.
I sent another message.
“Madam… busy? 😊”
Still no reply.
During that time, my mind wandered into places it probably shouldn’t have.
I started wondering if everything was okay.
Was she busy?
Was something wrong?
Was she alright?
About an hour later, she finally called.
She explained that she had been talking with her colleagues during lunch.
To be honest, I wasn’t upset because she spent time with them.
Everyone deserves time with their friends and colleagues.
That was never the problem.
What made me anxious was not knowing what had happened.
Even a small message saying, “I’m talking with my colleagues. I’ll call you later,” would have been enough to put my mind at ease.
Instead, I spent nearly an hour imagining all sorts of possibilities.
Without realizing it, that anxiety had already affected my mood.
I wasn’t able to talk naturally.
I gently told her to return to work because she had already spent a long time on her lunch break.
After the call ended, I tried to focus on coding again.
But I couldn’t.
My thoughts kept replaying the afternoon in my head.
Eventually, I went for lunch myself.
She called again while I was eating.
Even then, I wasn’t speaking like my usual self.
She apologized.
But hearing her say “sorry” never makes me feel better.
I don’t want us to become a couple that keeps apologizing for every misunderstanding.
We’re on the same team.
What matters is understanding each other—not counting mistakes.
After a short while, one of her colleagues arrived, so we ended the call.
The rest of the afternoon felt unusually long.
I was waiting for the moment she would leave the office because I knew we’d finally get a chance to talk properly.
Around that time, I had another meeting with our product team.
They wanted us to build a separate product for the customer support team, so I joined the discussion.
At the same time, my Pappa was getting ready to leave work.
It had started raining heavily where she was.
I immediately sent her some money and told her to book a cab instead of travelling in the rain.
By the time my meeting ended, the rain had stopped.
So she decided to take a shared auto instead.
During the first part of her journey, she was travelling with one of her colleagues, so we didn’t talk.
I waited.
Finally, after reaching her first stop, she called me.
At first, I tried acting as though everything was fine.
But my Pappa knows me too well.
Within a few minutes, she asked,
“Why do you sound so quiet?”
She even made me promise to tell her honestly.
So I did.
I told her that the afternoon had hurt me.
While trying to explain my feelings, I used the wrong words.
I mistakenly said that she had “forgotten me.”
The moment I said it, I realized that wasn’t what I actually meant.
I never meant that she had forgotten me.
What I meant was something much simpler.
During that busy conversation with her colleagues, I wished she had remembered to send me just one small message.
That’s all.
But words are powerful.
Sometimes they wound more deeply than we intend.
My sentence hurt her.
The moment I realized that, my heart sank.
I couldn’t stop apologizing.
I knew exactly how painful words like that can be because I had once stood in the same place in a previous relationship.
As I kept saying sorry, my voice slowly began to shake.
My eyes filled with tears.
I tried my best to control them because the last thing I wanted was for her to cry because of me.
So I took a deep breath and said,
“Let’s leave this topic here.”
There was no point in hurting each other any further.
Instead, we changed the subject.
Slowly…
The smiles returned.
The laughter came back.
By the end of the journey, everything felt normal again.
Soon, she reached her stop, called her brother, and headed home.
I returned to work.
A little later, she texted me saying she had reached home safely.
But I could still sense that she wasn’t herself.
She told me she was exhausted and wanted to order some juice.
She asked her brother for the current home address so she could place the order, but the conversation didn’t go very well.
Feeling overwhelmed, she started saying things like,
“Nobody likes me.”
“Everyone gets angry with me.”
I knew those words weren’t really about that moment alone.
Sometimes, when emotions build up throughout the day, even a small incident feels much bigger.
I wanted to comfort her.
Text messages didn’t feel enough.
So I asked her to join a video call.
I told her she didn’t even have to speak.
“Just listen.”
For the next few minutes, I did everything I could to make her smile again.
I joked.
I teased her.
I acted silly.
And finally…
She laughed.
That one smile was all I wanted.
A few moments later, her mother called her, so we ended the video call.
After that, I went for dinner with my teammates before returning to my room.
Later that night, my Pappa wished me good night before going to sleep.
Now, as I write these final lines, it’s 11:24 p.m. here in Dubai.
It’s time for me to sleep too.
Today reminded me that love isn’t about never having misunderstandings.
It’s about choosing each other, even after the misunderstandings happen.
So before I close my eyes tonight, there’s only one thing I want to say.
I’m sorry, Pappa.
Your little child is still learning.
And tomorrow, I’ll try to be a little better than I was today.
Good night.