I met her on a wet Tuesday evening in Dublin, the kind of evening where the rain doesn’t fall so much as hang in the air and make everyone look a little defeated. I was standing outside the George’s Street Arcade pretending to check my phone, though the truth was I had nowhere to go. I had just left a job interview that went badly, not because I wasn’t qualified, but because I had spent forty minutes apologising for taking up space.
She was selling small hand-painted postcards under the shelter, her hair tucked into a green wool hat, her fingers stained blue and yellow from paint. I remember one card clearly: Poolbeg Lighthouse, tiny and red against a stormy sky. I picked it up because it looked lonely, and she said, “That one’s my favourite. It looks like it’s waiting for itself to come home.”
I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. She smiled as if she had caught me doing something tender. Her name was Niamh. I bought the card even though I was counting coins for the bus, and she asked if I wanted to get a coffee because her hands were frozen and I looked like I’d just been rejected by the whole city.
We went to a small café near Dame Street. I told her about the interview, about being twenty-six and feeling already behind, about how I hated photographs of myself, hated hearing my voice played back, hated the way I always seemed to become smaller in rooms full of confident people. I expected her to give advice, the usual kind, like “believe in yourself” or “everything happens for a reason.” Instead, she took my postcard, turned it over, and wrote, “Today I did not disappear.”
“Keep it in your wallet,” she said. “Read it when you start shrinking.”
I saw her again the following week by accident, though later I wondered if Dublin is small enough to make accidents feel like appointments. I was walking through St Stephen’s Green during lunch, eating a sandwich I didn’t want, and there she was on a bench feeding crumbs to sparrows and sketching strangers. She waved me over like we had known each other for years.
That became our habit. Not dating, not exactly. Something softer and more difficult to name. We met after work, or after my failed interviews, or after her market days. We walked along the Grand Canal and argued about songs. We sat on the steps near the National Gallery and watched tourists unfold maps. Once, she brought me to Whelan’s to hear a band neither of us knew, and when I refused to dance, she danced badly enough for both of us until I was laughing so hard I forgot to be embarrassed.
Niamh had a way of noticing the parts of me I tried to hide and treating them as ordinary. When I said sorry too often, she would hold up one finger and say, “That’s your last free apology of the day.” When I criticised myself, she asked, “Would you speak like that to a child?” I said no. “Then don’t speak like that to someone who is still learning.”
I thought she was teaching me how to be loved by someone else. I was wrong. She was teaching me how to stand beside myself without flinching.
The incident that changed everything happened in a pub in Phibsborough, after a long day where I had been rejected for another job and had decided, with the dramatic certainty of sadness, that I was useless. Niamh had invited a few friends out. They were warm people, loud and bright, and I spent the first hour convinced they were all wondering why I was there. At one point, someone took a group photo. I saw myself in it and felt the old disgust rise in me like a tide. My face looked tired. My smile looked wrong. I said, too sharply, “Delete that. I look awful.”
The table went quiet for half a second, not cruelly, just surprised. I stood up and went outside before anyone could respond. It was cold,
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
