I used to write in a small black journal on the 15B bus from Rathmines into town. Nothing important, I told myself. Shopping lists, odd dreams, sentences I overheard outside pubs, complaints about the rain. But really it was the only place I was honest. After my father died, I found it easier to talk to paper than to people. Paper never looked worried. Paper never said, “You’ll be grand,” when you were absolutely not grand.
At the time I was working in a little café near St Stephen’s Green, making flat whites for office workers and pretending I had a plan. There was a woman called Niamh who came in most mornings before nine. She wore a navy coat, always ordered tea, and always said thank you like she meant it. She worked somewhere around Grafton Street, I think, though I never asked at first. Our relationship was made of tiny things: her forgetting her umbrella and me keeping it behind the counter, me drawing a crooked heart in the foam of her friend’s cappuccino, her laughing at it as if I’d done something clever.
I wrote about her in the journal long before I said anything out loud. I wrote that her smile made the whole café seem warmer. I wrote that when she stood at the window watching the rain hit the pavement, I wanted to stand beside her. I also wrote the darker things: that grief had made me feel like a ghost in my own life, that I was thinking of leaving Dublin because every corner reminded me of my father, from the Luas stop where he used to meet me to the bench by the canal where we once ate chips in silence after a hospital appointment.
One Friday evening, after a long shift, I went to Grogan’s with two lads from work. I had one pint too many and left the journal on the little ledge under the table. I didn’t notice until the next morning. The panic was instant and physical. My whole chest tightened. It wasn’t just a notebook. It was the part of me I kept hidden so I could function in public.
I rang the pub, went back in, checked under tables, asked staff who were kind but busy. Nothing. For two days I walked around feeling exposed, as if strangers on South William Street knew my worst thoughts. On Monday morning, Niamh didn’t come in. I told myself that had nothing to do with the journal, but by then my imagination was a cruel machine.
She arrived on Tuesday just before closing. No navy coat. Her hair was damp from the rain, and she was holding the black journal in both hands like it was something alive.
“I’m sorry,” she said before I could speak. “I found it in Grogan’s on Friday. I opened it to see if there was a name. Then I read more than I should have.”
I felt the blood rise to my face. There are moments when you want the ground to take you, and the ground, rudely, refuses. I reached for it, but she didn’t let go straight away.
“I’m not here to embarrass you,” she said. “I’m here because I read the part about leaving. And the part about your dad. And yes, the part about me.”
I looked away, out towards the wet shine of the street, people hurrying past with paper bags and collars turned up. I mumbled something stupid like, “Right.”
She placed the journal on the counter. “My mother died three years ago,” she said. “I did the same thing. I tried to disappear without calling it disappearing. New job, new flat, new haircut. I kept moving so nobody could ask me
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
