I met him on a wet Thursday outside a café in Stoneybatter, both of us sheltering under the same narrow awning like Dublin itself had decided to introduce us. He asked if I was waiting for someone. I said I was waiting for the rain to soften. He laughed, and for a while, that was enough.
His name was Cian. He had kind eyes, the sort that made you feel listened to even when he was only asking what bus you were getting. We started slowly: coffee after work, pints on Camden Street, walks along the Grand Canal where he would tell me about his childhood in Ringsend and how he never wanted a life that felt too planned. I admired that at first. I had always been the organiser, the girl with the calendar, the emergency tissues, the spare phone charger. Being with him felt like stepping outside of my own habits.
The trouble was, I didn’t realise I had stepped into someone else’s waiting room.
There was an ex. There is always an ex in stories like this, but I didn’t want to be dramatic about it. Her name came up lightly at first. She still had some of his books. She knew his mam. They had been together for five years, and it had ended “in a complicated way,” which I accepted because I wanted to be the kind of woman who wasn’t threatened by history.
For nearly eight months, I became very good at understanding. When he cancelled dinner because she was upset, I understood. When he didn’t introduce me to his friends because “things were still delicate,” I understood. When he took calls from her in the middle of our evenings, stepping outside pubs in the cold while I sat with two drinks and pretended not to feel foolish, I understood so well it started to make me ill.
The worst part was that he was never cruel in the obvious ways. He brought me soup when I had the flu. He remembered that I hated coriander. Once, after a long day, he met me at Heuston Station with a cheap bunch of tulips from a corner shop, and I remember thinking, this is proof. Proof that he sees me. Proof that I’m not imagining it.
But love should not require that much evidence.
The incident that ended it happened on a Friday in December. We were meant to go to a small gig near Whelan’s. I had bought the tickets. I had changed out of my work clothes in the office bathroom, put on lipstick with shaking hands, and felt that silly brightness you get when you still believe an evening can repair everything.
He texted at half six. “I’m so sorry. Can’t tonight. Aoife needs me. I’ll explain.”
I stared at the message while people moved around me on Grafton Street, arms full of shopping bags, collars turned up against the wind. My first instinct was the old one: reply kindly, make it easy for him, be the safe place he could return to when the storm passed. I typed, “Of course, hope she’s okay.” Then I stopped.
I don’t know what changed in me exactly. It wasn’t dramatic. There was no grand speech forming in my head. It was smaller and quieter than that, like a key turning. I suddenly saw the shape of my life if I stayed: me dressed and ready, him apologising, another woman’s feelings deciding my evenings, my birthdays, my future. I saw myself becoming patient enough to disappear.
So I deleted the message and wrote, “I hope she’s okay too. But I can’t keep being the person you come to when you’re not choosing her. I’m done.”
He rang immediately. I let it ring. Then he texted. Then rang again. I stood outside a shop window lit with Christmas jumpers and felt my whole body trembling, not from the cold but from the violence of finally taking my own side.
I went to the gig alone.
That sounds braver than it felt. I cried in the toilets before the support act. I drank one warm cider too quickly and kept checking my phone as if pain might send a better message if I gave it enough chances. But halfway through the main set, the singer asked everyone to put their phones away, and for once, I did. I put mine deep into
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
