I met Conor on a wet Tuesday in Smithfield, the kind of evening where Dublin looks like it has been rubbed with silver. I was standing outside the Luas stop with a broken umbrella and a paper bag of groceries slowly softening in the rain. He offered me the shelter of his own umbrella without making a performance of it. We walked as far as Stoneybatter together, both pretending it was normal to share half a dry shoulder with a stranger. By the time we reached Manor Street, I knew his sister had just had a baby, he knew I worked in a bookshop, and we were laughing like people who had known each other much longer than twenty minutes.
Our first proper date was at The Cobblestone. He was shy at the start, tapping his thumb against the side of his pint, but when the music began, something in him opened. He told me he had grown up in Raheny and still went back every Sunday for dinner because his mam would “take it personally if the roast potatoes had no audience.” I liked that about him. He had roots. He belonged to people. I had spent most of my twenties moving rooms, jobs, and versions of myself, always keeping one eye on the exit.
For six months, I let myself be loved by him. That is the most honest way I can say it. We went walking in the Phoenix Park when the deer were out and the air smelled of wet leaves. We ate chips on the wall near the Grand Canal after nights in town. He learned how I took my coffee. I learned he got quiet when he was worried, not because he was angry, but because he was arranging his feelings before handing them over. He was gentle in a way that made me feel both safe and guilty.
The guilt came from a secret I kept too long. Before I met him, I had applied for a job in Berlin. It was the sort of thing I had done half-heartedly, sending my CV into the world when I felt trapped. I never expected to hear back. Then, in November, while Conor and I were sitting in a small café near George’s Street, my phone lit up with an email offering me the position. Start date: January.
I should have told him immediately. Instead, I turned my phone face down and asked if he wanted another coffee. I told myself I needed time to think. Then I told myself Christmas was coming and it would be cruel to spoil it. Every excuse sounded kinder than the truth, but really I was afraid. I was afraid that if I said it aloud, he would look at me with that open, trusting face and ask me to stay. Worse, I was afraid I might.
He found out two weeks before Christmas. We were in my flat in Portobello, wrapping presents badly on the floor. My laptop was open, and an accommodation email popped up across the screen. I saw his eyes move before I could close it. He went very still. He did not shout. That would have been easier. He just asked, “Were you going to tell me?”
I said yes, which was true in the weakest possible way. He nodded, but his face changed. It was like watching a door close slowly from the other side. I tried to explain that the job was a chance I had wanted for years, that I had never planned to fall in love, that I did not know how to choose between a future I had imagined and a person I had not expected. The more I spoke, the smaller he looked.
Finally he said, “I wasn’t asking you to give up your life. I just thought I was in it.”
That sentence has stayed with me longer than some friendships. I wanted to tell him he was in it, that he had changed the shape of it, that I had carried him into every room of my mind. But the truth was I had kept him separate from the decision that mattered most. I had treated him like someone who would make things difficult, when he had only ever made things tender.
We met once more before I left. It was early January, bitter cold, beside the Liffey near Ha’penny Bridge. The city was waking slowly, buses sighing at the kerb, gulls making their
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
