I met Ciarán in a way that felt engineered to become a story. It was a wet Thursday outside Whelan’s, the kind of Dublin rain that doesn’t fall so much as hang around your face. I had forgotten my umbrella, he had two, and he offered me the broken one with such confidence that I laughed before I even knew his name. By the time we reached Camden Street, both of us were soaked, the umbrella had turned inside out twice, and we had decided we were probably soulmates.
That was the problem, I think. We decided too early. For the first few months, we treated love like a project with a deadline. We planned weekends in Galway before we knew how the other took coffee. We said things like “when we live together” while still pretending not to notice each other’s bad moods. We took photographs in St Stephen’s Green, kissed under the lights on Grafton Street, and told our friends we had “just known.” The truth was quieter and less flattering. We were both lonely, both thirty, both tired of first dates, and both desperate for something to finally work.
When it began to crack, it did so in ordinary places. In the queue at Lidl when he forgot I hated coriander. On the Luas when I made a joke that landed too sharply. In his kitchen in Phibsborough when I cried because he had not replied to a message for six hours, and he looked at me as if my sadness was a locked door he had never been given a key for. We were not cruel people, but we became careful in a way that felt cruel. Every conversation had a second conversation hidden underneath it.
We broke up after a dinner in Ranelagh. Nothing dramatic happened. No glass thrown, no betrayal uncovered. He just said, very gently, “I feel like I’m always auditioning.” I remember staring at the small candle on the table and realising I felt the same. I was always checking whether I was being loved enough. He was always checking whether he was loving correctly. We walked to the taxi rank in silence. Before I got in, he hugged me for a long time, the way you hug someone you still love but can’t keep holding without hurting them.
For six months, we didn’t speak. I told people I was fine in the bright, brittle way that convinces nobody. I went swimming at the Forty Foot on Sundays because cold water seemed like a punishment with health benefits. I walked the canal after work. I stopped performing heartbreak and eventually, unwillingly, began living again. I learned how peaceful my own flat could be. I learned that missing someone was not always a sign you should return to them. Sometimes it was just proof that something had mattered.
Then one November evening, I saw him in The IFI café. He was reading a book and eating a slice of lemon cake with complete seriousness, which was so him that it made my chest ache. I considered leaving before he looked up, but he did. For a second, we were both our old selves, frightened and hopeful. Then he smiled, not the grand smile from the beginning, but a small one, unguarded.
We had tea. We did not talk about getting back together. That was the strange mercy of it. We talked about his new job, my sister’s baby, the cinema seats that always made your knees feel too high. He told me he had started going to therapy. I told him I had stopped pretending I liked craft beer. We laughed easily, because there was nothing to win. When we left, he asked if I’d like to walk a bit, and we went down towards Temple Bar, past the buskers and tourists and people spilling out of pubs into the cold.
At the Ha’penny Bridge, he said, “I’m sorry I made love feel like an exam.” I said, “I’m sorry I kept marking you.” We stood there, two people with no plan, no speech prepared, no guarantee waiting to rescue us. I think that was the first honest moment we
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
