I was twenty-nine when Aoife told me she was leaving, though at first she said it in the gentlest possible way, as if she was asking me to mind her coat for a minute. We were sitting on a bench near St Stephen’s Green, with coffee going cold between us, and she kept looking at the ducks like they might give her courage. I knew before she said his name. There are silences that arrive already packed.
His name was Martin. He was forty-nine, divorced, worked in architecture, wore good shoes, and had the calm voice of a man who never ran for a bus. I had met him twice at an exhibition opening in Temple Bar, where Aoife’s friend was showing photographs. I remember him laughing at something she said, not too loudly, not trying too hard. That was what I hated most later. He had not stolen her with drama. He had simply stood there, steady as a lamppost, while I was still all weather.
Aoife and I had been together four years. We had lived in a small flat off Clanbrassil Street where the heating clicked like an old bicycle and the window in the kitchen wouldn’t close properly. We were always saying it was temporary. I was always nearly getting promoted, nearly saving money, nearly ready to talk about marriage without making a joke. She was patient for a long time, but patience has a sound when it wears thin. It sounds like someone washing a cup very carefully at midnight.
She said she did not leave because of his age or his money or his nice apartment near Grand Canal Dock. She said she left because she was tired of being the only person in our relationship who could picture the future in any detail. I wanted to argue, and I did. I said twenty years was ridiculous. I said he had a daughter nearly our age. I said people would talk. She cried then, not because I was wrong about any of that, but because I was missing the point on purpose.
For a few weeks I made grief into a full-time job. I walked everywhere because sitting still felt dangerous. I walked along the Liffey, past couples sharing chips, past office lights, past men smoking outside pubs with their sleeves rolled up. I drank too much in places where we had once been happy, which is a foolish kind of haunting. In The Long Hall, I stared at the mirrors and imagined Martin ordering wine with dinner. In Grogan’s, I told my friend Ciarán that she had chosen an old man over me. He let me say it twice, then put down his pint and said, “Maybe she chose an adult.”
I was furious with him for that. Then I went home and looked around the flat. There were unopened letters on the table, a broken chair I had promised to fix, a suitcase of clean laundry I had been living from for three weeks. Aoife’s plants were dying on the sill. I had been telling myself I was heartbroken, which was true, but I was also embarrassed. She had not left a great love story. She had left a waiting room.
The worst moment came in April, outside the IFI after a film I had gone to alone. I saw them across the street, coming out of a restaurant. Martin was holding an umbrella over both of them though it was barely raining. Aoife was laughing, and not in the forced way you laugh when you want someone watching to think you are fine. She looked rested. That hurt more than if she had looked guilty. I stepped into a doorway so she wouldn’t see me, and for a second I felt like a child hiding from something he had no power to change.
I expected to hate her forever
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
