I used to think heartbreak had to be loud. Doors closing, boxes packed, someone crying in a kitchen while the kettle boiled for no reason. When my five-year relationship with Aoife ended, it was like that for a while. We divided books, mugs, and friends with the dull politeness of people trying not to become cruel. I missed her terribly, but there was a shape to that grief. We had loved each other. We had tried. We had failed. There was proof it had happened.
The love that stayed with me longest was different. Her name was Clara, and she worked in the bookshop near Dawson Street where I used to hide during my lunch breaks. I was twenty-nine then, working in an office I disliked, pretending that a stable job was the same thing as a life. Clara had a laugh that made strangers look up from shelves. She wore silver rings and always had ink on the side of her hand. The first time we spoke, she recommended me a book I never finished, though I carried it around for weeks like a message.
For almost two years, I built a small world around seeing her. I took longer routes through Dublin just to pass the shop window. I learned which cafés she liked, not in a frightening way, but in the foolish, private way lonely people gather details and call it closeness. Sometimes we talked about films, weather, rent, her mother in Galway, my fear of turning thirty with nothing to show for it. Once, after closing, we walked together as far as St Stephen’s Green in the rain, sharing my umbrella though it was too small for both of us. Her shoulder kept touching mine. I remember thinking, this is the beginning. It was not.
I never asked her out. That is the whole crime and the whole tragedy. I was always waiting for a better moment, a clearer sign, a version of myself that was braver and better dressed. I told myself that timing mattered. I told myself she was too kind to everyone, and I was probably just another customer who read sad novels and smiled too much. Meanwhile, in my head, we had already travelled to Lisbon, adopted a nervous rescue dog, argued over paint colours in a flat in Portobello, and grown old enough to laugh at how long it took me to ask her for a coffee.
Then one Friday evening, I saw her outside Grogan’s with a man in a navy coat. He had his hand on the small of her back. She looked up at him with an ease I had never earned from her. There was no betrayal in it, no villain, no dramatic reveal. Just a woman living a life I had not entered. I went into the pub anyway, ordered a pint I did not want, and sat near the window watching them disappear toward South William Street.
The strange thing was that it hurt worse than losing Aoife. With Aoife, I could say we had run out of road. With Clara, there had never been a road at all, only a map I had drawn in secret. I was grieving a fiction, and that made me ashamed. How do you explain mourning someone you never kissed? How do you tell your friends that an imagined hand in yours has left you empty?
A few months later, Clara invited me to the bookshop’s last night before it closed. Rising rent, she said, rolling her eyes like it was a weather forecast. There was cheap wine in paper cups and people standing between half-empty shelves. I nearly didn’t go, but something in me needed an ending that was real.
She hugged me when I arrived. Her hair smelled faintly of smoke and vanilla. We talked for a while about
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
