I used to tell people we were “just intense.” That was the word I chose because it sounded romantic and grown-up, the kind of thing you might say about a couple who drank red wine in small kitchens and argued about films. The truth was simpler and much sadder. I was afraid of him, but I was more afraid of the empty space that would come after him.
We lived in a small flat in Rathmines, above a shop where the shutters rattled every morning at half six. I had moved in after only eight months because rent in Dublin was mad and because he made it feel like proof of love. At the start, he was all warmth. He’d meet me outside work with a coffee, remember tiny things I’d said, walk with me along the Grand Canal as if the whole city had been built for us. When he looked at me, I felt chosen.
Then, slowly, being chosen started to feel like being watched. If I wore a dress, he asked who it was for. If I laughed at my phone, he wanted to see the message. If I went for a pint with friends on Camden Street, he’d go quiet for two days afterwards, moving around the flat like a storm cloud. I learned to cancel plans before he asked me to. I learned to keep my phone face down. I learned to apologise for things I hadn’t done, because peace felt more important than pride.
The worst part was that he didn’t seem like a monster all the time. Some mornings he’d make tea and toast and touch my shoulder gently, and I’d think, there he is, that’s the man I love. I built a life around waiting for those mornings. I told myself everyone had difficult patches. I told myself I was no saint either. I told myself leaving would mean admitting I had been wrong for three years, and I didn’t know who I would be if I wasn’t his girlfriend.
I was thirty-two then, which felt ancient in my panic. My friends were getting married, having babies, buying houses in places I had to look up on maps. I had a toothbrush, a shared duvet, and half my clothes in black bin bags under the bed because the wardrobe was “mostly his.” Starting again sounded humiliating. I pictured myself back in a box room, single, scrolling through rental listings, explaining to my mother why I had failed at love.
The incident that changed everything was embarrassingly small from the outside. It was a wet Thursday in November. I had met my sister near St Stephen’s Green after work because she was having a hard time and needed to talk. I texted him to say I’d be home late. He replied with a thumbs-up, which I knew by then was not a thumbs-up at all.
When I got home, he was sitting in the dark. No television, no music, just the light from the street coming through the blinds. He asked me where I had really been. I said I had told him. He laughed, not loudly, but in a way that made my stomach drop. Then he picked up the framed photo of us from the windowsill, one taken in Phoenix Park the first summer we were together, and placed it face down on the table.
“You love making me look stupid,” he said.
I remember staring at that photograph lying flat, as if the two happy people inside it had finally given up pretending. Something in me went very quiet. I didn’t shout. I didn’t cry. I just saw the next ten years in a flash: me shrinking, explaining, smoothing things over, calling fear by softer names.
The next morning, I took a backpack to work. I put my passport, my work laptop, two jumpers, and the earrings my granny had left me into it. At lunch, I rang my sister from a laneway off Grafton Street, trying to sound normal while my whole body shook. She didn’t ask for proof. She didn’t say, “But he seems lovely.” She just said, “Come here tonight.”
I left while he was at football. I wish I could say it felt cinematic,
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
