We broke up in the short-stay car park outside Dublin Airport, on a wet Tuesday morning, with the boot of my car still open and his suitcase sitting between us like a third person. It was one of those grey Dublin mornings where the sky looks tired of itself. Planes were lifting off somewhere above us, making that deep roar that you feel in your chest before you hear it properly. He was flying to Berlin for a job he said would only be for a year. I had driven him from our flat in Stoneybatter, past Phibsborough and out the M50, both of us talking about nonsense because the real thing was too large to fit in the car.
We had been together five years. We met in The Cobblestone on a Sunday evening when I was trying to look like I understood trad music and he was laughing at me from the next table. He had a way of making ordinary life seem chosen. A coffee on Capel Street became a ritual. A walk along the canal became our cure for everything. We were not dramatic people. We paid rent, bought milk, argued about laundry, and made plans in the soft careless way you do when you believe there will always be more time to make them properly.
But the year before he left, the future started arriving before we were ready. He wanted movement, a new city, better work, a version of himself not pressed flat by Dublin rents and long commutes. I wanted roots. I wanted Sunday dinners with my parents in Raheny, a small garden someday, a child maybe, though I had only begun to say that out loud. Every conversation became a roundabout. We entered gently and exited nowhere.
That morning, I made tea at half five and burned the toast. He came into the kitchen with his hair still wet from the shower, wearing the navy jumper I had bought him in Galway. He looked nervous, which annoyed me at first. I thought he had no right to look nervous when he was the one leaving. Then I saw his hands shaking slightly as he buttered the blackened toast and I loved him so much it almost made me cruel.
The drive was quiet. Near Santry, he reached for my hand, and I let him hold it for exactly one minute before needing both hands on the wheel. He said, “You could still come over in April.” I said, “Maybe.” We both knew maybe had become the place where we put things we did not want to bury.
In the car park, everything became practical. Ticket. Barrier. Level 2. Bay C14. Rain on the windscreen. He checked his passport three times. I lifted his suitcase out because I needed something to do with my hands. He said my name, softly, and I remember thinking, don’t say it like that. Don’t make it beautiful now.
He told me he didn’t think we should pretend. He said the distance would turn us into accountants of affection, counting calls, visits, messages, who tried harder, who failed first. He said he loved me but didn’t know how to bring that love with him without making both of us smaller. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to say love was supposed to be bigger than geography, bigger than Ryanair gates and rental deposits and fear. Instead, I said, “You decided this already.”
He cried then, which surprised me. Not loudly. Just tears he seemed ashamed of. He said he had been hoping I would decide for him. That I would say come home or I’m coming with you or don’t go. But I had been hoping the same from him. We had loved each other deeply, but in that moment I understood we had also been waiting for the other person to perform the rescue.
People passed us dragging suitcases, children in puffy coats, a woman shouting into her phone that she was at departures, not arrivals. Life kept moving with embarrassing confidence. He stepped forward and held me, and for a few seconds I let myself believe it was not the end, just another airport hug, another temporary goodbye. His cheek was cold from the rain. He smelled of my laundry detergent and the aftershave he only wore when he was anxious.
When he let go, he kissed my forehead, not my mouth. That was how I knew. A kiss on the mouth might have asked a question. A kiss on the forehead gave an answer.
He walked towards the terminal, then turned once and lifted his hand. I lifted mine back. I stayed standing beside the car until he disappeared through the sliding doors. Then I got into the driver’s seat and the ticket machine receipt was still in
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
