I met her on a wet Tuesday outside Connolly Station, both of us pretending not to be bothered by the rain. She had a paper bag of chips from somewhere near Amiens Street and was trying to eat them with one hand while holding a broken umbrella with the other. A gust turned the umbrella inside out, and she laughed so hard that the chips fell all over the pavement. I helped her gather what could be saved, though there wasn’t much worth saving. She looked at me and said, “Well, that’s dinner ruined.” I said, “Only if you were planning to eat off the ground.” That was the first time I made her laugh, properly laugh, and for two years I carried that sound around like something lucky in my pocket.
Her name was Clara. She lived in Rathmines and worked in a bookshop near Dawson Street. I was doing shifts in a café off George’s Street and telling everyone I was a musician, though most nights my guitar stayed in its case under my bed. We were both in our twenties, both broke in that cheerful Dublin way where a tenner felt like a plan. We walked everywhere. Through St Stephen’s Green when the leaves were turning, along the Grand Canal when we needed to talk, down Grafton Street on evenings when buskers made the city feel softer than it was.
Clara had this habit of looking back when she left somewhere. At first I thought it was because she was forgetful, checking for her scarf or bag, but then I realised she did it for people. At the door of a pub, at the Luas stop, outside my flat, she would turn once and lift her hand, even if we had only said goodbye two seconds before. It made every parting feel gentle. Like nothing bad could happen between one goodbye and the next hello.
The last year was different. Not all at once. Love rarely leaves dramatically at the beginning. It starts by answering messages later. It starts by saying “I’m just tired” when the tiredness is not the body but the heart. I was trying to get my music going, playing small gigs in pubs where nobody listened unless they knew you. She came to every one at first, sitting near the front with a pint she took an hour to finish. Then she came to fewer. Then she said she didn’t like watching me look disappointed after each set.
I blamed Dublin. I blamed rent, winter, bad jobs, the way the city could make you feel crowded and lonely in the same breath. I didn’t blame myself, not then. I was moody when things didn’t go my way. I mistook her patience for permission to keep being difficult. She would ask simple questions like, “Are you happy with me?” and I would answer with complaints about everything else. She wanted honesty. I gave her weather reports.
The night it ended, we met in The Long Hall on South Great George’s Street. It was December, and the windows were fogged from the heat inside. She had chosen the place because we’d had one of our first proper dates there. I remember the red walls, the brass lamps, the low murmur of people having ordinary nights while my life quietly rearranged itself.
She was already there when I arrived, sitting at a small table with her coat still on. That told me more than her face did. Clara always took off her coat when she meant to stay. I asked if she wanted another drink. She said no. Then she folded her hands on the table, looked straight at me, and said, “I can’t keep loving you for both of us.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to say I did love her, because I did. But there is a kind of love that lives only in feeling and never makes it into action. I loved her when she was walking away from me, but not enough when she was sitting beside me asking to be seen. That realisation arrived too late, and it arrived without mercy.
She didn’t cry. I think that hurt more. She had cried before, in the kitchen of my flat, on the number 16 bus, once outside a Tesco in Rathmines because I had forgotten her birthday dinner and tried to make a joke of it. By the time someone stops crying, they may already be gone. She told me she had accepted a job in Galway. She was leaving after Christmas. She said she wanted a life that felt open again.
We walked out together because neither of us knew how not to. The city was shining with rain. Taxis moved slowly along the
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
