I was forty-three when I decided I was finished with romance. I didn’t announce it dramatically. There was no throwing of rings into the Liffey or tearful speech in a pub. I simply stopped imagining anyone beside me. My marriage had ended quietly two years before, in the same way a kettle stops boiling after someone forgets to switch it on again. We had one daughter, grown enough to be kind but not old enough to understand the particular loneliness of eating dinner standing at the counter. I kept the flat in Rathmines, kept my job in a dental surgery, kept my hairdresser appointments, kept going. That was my talent then: continuing.
On Saturdays I walked into town, not because I needed anything, but because Dublin made me feel less alone without asking questions. I would pass through St Stephen’s Green, buy a coffee I couldn’t really afford, and sit near the duck pond watching people love each other in ordinary ways. A woman fixing her husband’s scarf. Two lads sharing chips. An old couple arguing over directions as if they had been doing it for fifty years and intended to do it for fifty more. I used to think love had to arrive like music. After my marriage ended, I thought maybe it had only ever been noise.
I met Ciarán in a queue at the Irish Film Institute. I had gone alone to see an old Italian film, the kind where everyone smokes beautifully and suffers beside the sea. He was behind me, trying to balance a coffee, a ticket, and a packet of Minstrels. When the sweets slipped, I caught them against my coat before they hit the floor. He said, “That’s the closest thing I’ve had to sport all year,” and I laughed before I could stop myself. He was forty-eight, a history teacher from Drumcondra, divorced, with two sons who apparently ate him out of house and home. He had kind eyes, but I distrusted kind eyes. Kind eyes had looked at me across a kitchen table and said they needed to start again without me.
We sat separately in the cinema, but afterwards he was outside under the awning, rain coming down hard on Eustace Street. He asked if I wanted to wait it out with a cup of tea. I almost said no. The word was lined up in my mouth, neat and ready. Instead I said, “Tea, not wine.” He nodded like I had given him important terms in a treaty. We went to a small café nearby and talked about nothing dangerous: films, buses, the price of butter, how Dublin had changed and somehow not changed at all. When he asked for my number, I told him I was rusty. He said, “So am I. We’ll be a pair of old bicycles.”
For three weeks, we messaged. Not constantly, not like teenagers. A photo of a ridiculous dog outside George’s Street Arcade. A complaint about the rain. A recommendation for a book. Then he asked me to dinner in Kehoe’s, and the morning of it I nearly cancelled. I stood in my bedroom in a black dress, feeling foolish and exposed. My daughter rang from Galway and caught the wobble in my voice. When I told her I was going on a date, she went quiet, then said, “Mam, you don’t have to be brave forever.” That undid me more than anything.
The date was not perfect. That is why I trusted it. He was nervous and knocked over a glass of water. I talked too much about my work because silence frightened me. Halfway through, his phone buzzed and he frowned because his younger son had forgotten his keys. I thought, there it is, real life barging in. He apologised and said he might have to
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
