I was nineteen the summer it happened, working the breakfast shift in a café near O’Connell Street, smelling of toast and coffee no matter how often I washed my hands. I was still living at home in Raheny, still telling my mother I was “not that kind of girl,” though I wasn’t sure what kind of girl I was. I only knew I felt late to everything: kissing, confidence, leaving, becoming.
His name was Cian. He came in every Tuesday after college with a sketchbook under his arm and ordered tea he never finished. He had dark curls, paint under his nails, and a way of listening that made you reckless. The first time he asked me out, I said no because I panicked. The second time, I said yes so quickly I nearly dropped the till drawer.
We started walking everywhere because neither of us had money. We walked along the Liffey, through Temple Bar before the hen parties arrived, around St Stephen’s Green when the evenings stretched golden and forgiving. He would draw people on napkins and give them to me like they were love letters. I kept them in a shoebox under my bed, beside concert tickets and a bottle of perfume I never wore.
One Friday in August, after a long hot day that made Dublin feel borrowed from another country, Cian suggested we go to Dollymount Strand. We bought chips in Clontarf and ate them from the paper, burning our fingers and laughing at gulls that looked personally offended by our happiness. The tide was far out, the sand damp and shining, and the Poolbeg chimneys stood in the distance like two red-and-white candles.
I remember being nervous before anything even happened. Not afraid of him, but afraid of the size of my own wanting. I had built virginity into a locked room in my head, something guarded by shame, religion, gossip, and every warning ever handed to girls in kitchens and school corridors. Cian didn’t push. That is why I trusted him. He kept asking if I was alright, so often that I laughed and told him he was ruining the romance.
We lay behind the dunes with our coats under us and the wind moving the grass above our heads. It was clumsy and tender and nothing like the dramatic thing I had imagined. There were no violins, no sudden transformation. There was sand everywhere, an awkward elbow, a pause where we both burst out laughing, and then a quietness so deep I could hear my own heart behaving like it belonged to someone braver.
Afterwards, I expected to feel different in some obvious way. Instead, I felt very much myself, only softer. Cian held my hand inside his jacket pocket as we walked back toward the road. The sky had gone purple over the bay. A man was throwing a ball for a dog that refused to return it. Dublin kept going, completely unaware that my life had tilted.
For three weeks, I was certain I loved him and equally certain nobody had ever loved like that before. We met after my shifts. We kissed at bus stops. We drank cheap pints in pubs where we pretended to understand craft beer. Once, in St Anne’s Park, he told me he wanted to move to Berlin for art college. He said it lightly, as if mentioning a change in weather. I smiled because I wanted to be the kind of girl who didn’t cling. Inside, something small and frightened began counting down.
He left at the end of September. We stood at Dublin Airport with his rucksack between us, both of us trying to be modern and calm. He promised visits. I promised I’d come over. We both meant it in the way young people mean things before distance teaches them how ordinary forgetting can be. For a while we messaged constantly. Then less. Then carefully. Then not at all, except for birthdays and one Christmas text that said, “Hope you’re happy,” which somehow made me cry harder than “I miss you” would have.
I hated myself for how much I had attached to him. I told friends I was fine. I told my mother nothing. On Sundays I walked to the beach alone and felt embarrassed by the memory of my own tenderness, as if I had left it there like a scarf. But time did its quiet work. The hurt became less sharp. The shoebox moved from under my bed to
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
