I started therapy because I had become the sort of person who apologised to doors after bumping into them. I was twenty-nine, living in a box room in Rathmines, working in an office near Grand Canal Dock, and still answering texts from a man who treated affection like a weather forecast: possible, occasional, never guaranteed. His name was Cian. He was not cruel in a dramatic way. He was worse than that. He was warm just often enough to keep me waiting.
My first appointment was on a rainy Tuesday, the kind of rain that makes Dublin look like it has been rubbed with charcoal. The therapist’s office was above a quiet shop near Camden Street. Her name was Maeve, and she had grey hair cut neatly at her chin and a voice that never rushed to fill a silence. I remember being disappointed by how ordinary the room was. A plant, two chairs, a box of tissues, a window with a view of buses sighing past. I think some small, ridiculous part of me expected therapy to feel like entering a cathedral. Instead, it felt like sitting down somewhere I could finally stop pretending to be easygoing.
I told Maeve about Cian in the language people use when they are protecting the person who is hurting them. He was busy. He was complicated. He had family things. He didn’t like labels. He needed space. I said all of this while twisting the sleeve of my jumper around my finger until the cuff looked strangled.
Maeve listened, then asked, “If your best friend described this relationship to you, what would you want for her?”
I hated the question immediately. It was too simple. Too clean. It slipped past all my clever arguments and landed somewhere honest. I pictured my friend Niamh sitting across from me in a pub, trying not to cry into a glass of wine, waiting for a message from a man who only remembered her when he was lonely. I knew exactly what I would say to her. I would tell her she deserved steadiness. I would tell her not to confuse longing with love. I would tell her that being chosen in scraps still leaves you hungry.
I didn’t say any of that to Maeve. I just cried.
For a few weeks, I thought I was becoming attached to Maeve herself. I looked forward to Thursdays with an eagerness that embarrassed me. I bought coffee beforehand from a place near Camden Street and rehearsed things I wanted to say. I noticed the colour of her scarf, the way she tilted her head when I contradicted myself, the fact that she remembered my sister’s name. Once, after a session where she said, “You don’t have to earn tenderness by being low-maintenance,” I walked home through St Stephen’s Green feeling almost giddy. I thought, God help me, I’ve fallen in love with my therapist.
But the more I sat with it, the more I realised it wasn’t Maeve I wanted. It was the world she kept pointing me towards. A world where I didn’t have to decode every silence. A world where I could ask for something without first apologising for having needs. I had mistaken relief for romance. I had mistaken being listened to for being rescued.
The actual ending with Cian was painfully undramatic. No slammed doors. No cinematic speech in the rain. We were in Kehoe’s off Grafton Street, and he was telling me, again, that he cared about me but wasn’t “in a place” for anything defined. I heard Maeve’s question in my head. What would you want for your best friend?
I looked at him across the small table, at the pint he kept turning with two fingers, at the face I had studied for months like an exam I could pass if I tried harder. My heart was racing, but my voice came out steady.
“I don’t think I can keep doing this,” I said.
He looked genuinely startled, which hurt more than I expected. Not because he loved me and had failed to say it, but because it had never occurred to him that I might leave. I had trained him to believe my patience was endless.
Afterwards, I walked all the way to the Liffey, though it was freezing. Near Ha’penny Bridge, I took out my phone and deleted the thread. Not blocked, not in anger. Just
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
