I met Aoife outside Grafton Street on a wet Thursday evening, the kind of Dublin rain that doesn’t fall so much as wait for you in the air. We had already broken up three times by then, though only once properly. The other two were just rehearsals, dramatic little exits followed by long apologetic messages and one of us turning up with coffee. That night was meant to be the real ending.
We had chosen a bench near St Stephen’s Green because neither of us wanted the intimacy of a pub. A pub meant staying. A pub meant ordering another round and letting the past soften around the edges. A bench meant we could say what had to be said and go home separately, like sensible adults. Of course, we lasted six minutes before she said she was freezing and I suggested we walk.
We walked without a plan, past buskers packing away their speakers, past shop windows glowing like little stages. She kept her hands in the pockets of her navy coat. I kept wanting to take one out and hold it. That was always my problem with Aoife. Even when I knew the right thing, my body remembered the wrong thing first.
We had loved each other in the difficult years. I was finishing college, working evenings in a café, trying to pretend I wasn’t scared of becoming ordinary. She was training to be a nurse and carrying everyone’s pain as if it had been assigned to her personally. We moved into a small flat in Rathmines with mould in the bathroom and a view of someone else’s wall. We were broke, exhausted, and very sure that love would make up for everything it couldn’t pay for.
It didn’t. Love did not wash the dishes after twelve-hour shifts. It did not fix the way I disappeared into myself when I was unhappy, or the way she could be cruel when she felt abandoned. We became two people standing in the same room, both waiting to be understood first.
By the time she got offered a job in Galway, the relationship had become a thing we carried out of habit. I told her to take it. She asked if I meant that. I said I did, too quickly. She cried then, not because I had hurt her, but because I had finally admitted what we both knew.
That Thursday was the last night before she left. We ended up crossing the Ha’penny Bridge, the Liffey black and restless beneath us. Halfway across, she stopped and looked back towards the lights.
“Do you think we ruined it?” she asked.
I knew what she meant. Not the relationship. The good parts. The first Christmas when we bought a tiny tree from a man near Portobello and carried it home like treasure. The summer evenings sitting on the canal wall, sharing chips and making plans we had no money for. The morning her father had his heart scare and she called me from the hospital bathroom, whispering, “I need you,” and I ran from work with my apron still on.
“No,” I said. “I think we stayed too long because it mattered.”
She nodded, and for a second I saw relief move across her face. Not happiness. Something sadder and kinder.
We went to a quiet corner of Temple Bar, not to drink ourselves brave, just to get warm. She ordered tea. I ordered a pint I barely touched. Around us, tourists laughed too loudly and a man near the window sang along to a song nobody else could hear. It should have made the moment smaller, all that ordinary noise, but instead it made it bearable.
Aoife took an envelope from her bag and slid it across the table. Inside was a photograph of us from our first year together, taken on Kill
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
