I met him on a wet Tuesday outside St Stephen’s Green, both of us sheltering under the same shop awning like two people who had been placed there by mistake. I was carrying a paper bag of pastries for an office I didn’t like, and he was holding a bicycle helmet with rainwater dripping from the strap. He smiled first, the sort of smile that asked permission. By the time the rain softened, we had shared a croissant, complained about Dublin buses, and exchanged numbers with the awkwardness of people trying not to look too pleased.
For three years, he was the kindest part of my life. We lived separately, him in Phibsborough and me near Portobello, but our days folded into each other. Sunday mornings were coffee on Camden Street. Friday evenings were chips after pints near Wexford Street. In summer, we walked along the Grand Canal and invented futures we were too young to afford. A terraced house. A dog with an old-man name. A kitchen big enough for dancing. He used to squeeze my hand at crossings, even when there were no cars coming.
The end did not arrive loudly. There was no betrayal I could point to, no message discovered in the blue light of midnight, no dramatic scene outside a pub. It came slowly, like damp into a wall. He became quieter. He stopped making plans more than a week ahead. When I asked if he was tired, he said yes. When I asked if it was work, he said mostly. I believed him because love makes you generous with excuses.
One evening in November, he asked me to meet him in Merrion Square. It was already dark at half five, and the paths were slick with leaves. I remember noticing the lights in the office windows around the park and thinking everyone up there looked safe, boxed in and busy. He was sitting on a bench with his elbows on his knees. Before he said anything, I knew. The body understands endings before the mind agrees to them.
He told me he loved me, and then he told me he could not stay. His mother had been diagnosed earlier that year, worse than he had let on. He was moving back to Galway to help care for her. I said we could do distance. He shook his head. I said I could visit. He shook his head again, and that hurt more than any sentence. Finally, he said he had been unhappy for months, not because of me, but because he had no room left inside himself to be someone’s partner. He said he was afraid he would start resenting me for needing ordinary things, like calls back and birthdays remembered and a future with shape.
I wanted to be angry. I wanted the clean, useful anger people talk about, the kind that burns through attachment and leaves you proud. Instead, I saw how exhausted he looked. His coat was missing a button. There were shadows under his eyes. He had broken my heart carefully, and somehow that made it worse. If he had been cruel, I could have built a wall. But he was gentle, and gentleness left the door open.
For weeks afterwards, I tried to hate him as a discipline. I deleted photos, then restored them, then deleted them again. I avoided Phibsborough as if the whole postcode belonged to him. I took long routes home so I would not pass the café where he used to order for me when I was anxious. My friends were loyal in the way good friends are. They called him selfish. They said I deserved someone sure. I nodded because part of me agreed, but another part kept remembering him carrying my father’s shopping up three flights of stairs after his hip operation, or standing outside the Rotunda with my sister when her baby came early, holding coffees nobody drank.
The final thread snapped on New Year’s Day. I was walking by the River Liffey, cold and slightly hungover, when my phone buzzed. It was a message from him. His mother had died the
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
