He proposed to me on a wet Friday evening in St Stephen’s Green, with the ducks shouting like drunks and the sky the colour of an old saucepan. It was not the kind of weather people imagine for engagements, but in Dublin you learn to make peace with rain. Ciarán had insisted we walk after dinner, even though I wanted to get the Luas home and take off my boots. He kept touching the pocket of his coat as if checking for his keys. I thought he was nervous about money, or work, or the fact that his mother had been asking too many questions about when we were going to “settle properly.”
We had been together nearly four years. We met outside Whelan’s after a gig, both pretending we had come out for fresh air when really we were sick of the crowd. He was gentle in a way that felt rare then. He listened. He remembered small things, like how I took my tea and that I hated carnations because they reminded me of funeral homes. When my father had a stroke, Ciarán drove from Rathmines to Beaumont Hospital every evening with soup in a flask. Love, to me, was never fireworks. It was someone showing up with clean socks and no complaint.
So when he got down on one knee near the bandstand, I cried before he even opened the little box. The ring was his grandmother’s, a modest gold band with a tiny stone that caught the grey light. A couple walking their dog stopped and smiled. I remember feeling embarrassed by their happiness for us. I remember thinking, this is the moment I will tell people about when we are old.
Then I looked at his face. He was crying too, but not with joy. There was grief in him, clear as a bruise.
I asked him what was wrong, and he said, “I want to marry you. I do.” That was how I knew there was something else. People only repeat the truth when they are trying to cover a lie beside it.
We sat on a damp bench while the ring stayed open between us. He told me about Maeve. I knew her name already. Everyone did. She was his friend from college, the one who lived in Berlin, the one who sent long voice notes, the one he described as “chaos but brilliant.” She had come home for Christmas six months earlier, and they had met for coffee near the Grand Canal. Nothing physical had happened, he said, as if that should comfort me. But he had realised he was in love with her. Or maybe, he said, he had always been in love with her and had only discovered the language for it too late.
I remember the sound of the rain on the leaves. I remember a busker somewhere near Grafton Street playing “The Auld Triangle.” I remember wanting to slap him and hold him at the same time, which is a terrible thing to feel about someone you love. He said he was proposing because he wanted to choose me. He said love was not always a feeling, sometimes it was a decision. He said I was his home.
For a few minutes, I let myself believe that might be enough. I imagined wearing the ring and moving through life beside him, pretending not to notice every time his phone lit up. I imagined children with his brown eyes and my stubborn chin. I imagined Christmas dinners, mortgage meetings, walks along Sandymount Strand, all of it built on the quiet knowledge that part of him was elsewhere. A house can stand with a crack in the foundation, but you will hear it at night.
I asked him if Maeve loved him too. He looked away. That was the answer.
I closed the ring box and put it back in his hand. It was the smallest movement, but it felt like lifting a wardrobe. The dog walkers had gone by then. Nobody applauded. Nobody knew a life had just split open on a public bench.
He begged me not to decide in anger. I told him I wasn’t angry, though that was not true yet. Anger came
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
