I used to think love would arrive loudly, with certainty, like the first bus pulling into Dublin on a wet morning. With him, it arrived in pieces. A hand on my back outside a pub in Rathmines. A cup of tea left beside my laptop when I was working late. A message at midnight saying, “Are you home safe?” It was never enough to build a life on, but it was always enough to make me stay one more week.
We met in Temple Bar, which is a terrible place to meet someone if you want anything simple. I was out with friends from work, pretending I liked crowded bars more than I did. He was standing near the smoking area, laughing with his whole face, and when he asked me where I was from, he listened like the answer mattered. That was the first thing I loved about him. He had this rare ability to make you feel chosen for a moment. Later, I learned that moments were all he was good at.
For nearly two years, we were almost together. He kept a toothbrush in my flat in Portobello but never called it ours. He knew how I took my coffee but forgot my birthday until the evening of it. He could spend a whole Sunday walking with me along the Grand Canal, telling me about his childhood, his fears, his dreams of opening a little café someday, and then disappear emotionally for a week after I asked where I fitted into any of it.
Whenever I got close to leaving, he became the man I wanted him to be. If I stopped calling, he would appear outside my office with flowers from a shop near Stephen’s Green. If I said I needed space, he would write long messages about how nobody understood him like I did. If I cried, he would hold me so carefully that I forgot he was the reason I was crying. I mistook his panic for love. That was my part in it. I kept confusing being needed with being cherished.
The final time happened in November, on a Friday evening that was already dark by half five. I had accepted a job in Galway. I hadn’t told him when I applied because I knew he would either laugh it off or suddenly promise me everything. When the offer came through, I sat in my kitchen staring at the email, feeling both free and heartbroken. I wanted him to be happy for me. I wanted him to ask me to stay. Mostly, I wanted him to prove that I was wrong about him.
We met that night in a small pub near Camden Street. He was late, as usual, and came in shaking rain from his jacket like nothing important was happening. I told him before we ordered. “I’m moving,” I said. “In three weeks.”
His face changed in a way I had waited years to see. Not anger. Not indifference. Fear. He reached across the table and took my hand, suddenly completely present. He said he loved me. He said it clearly, without jokes or escape routes. He said he had been stupid, that he was scared, that he could see us getting a place together if I stayed. He said all the sentences I had once rehearsed hearing. The strange thing was, by the time he finally said them, they sounded like they belonged to an old version of me.
I cried anyway. Not because I believed him, but because I remembered how badly I used to need those words. There is a particular grief in getting what you wanted after you have outgrown wanting it. I looked at him sitting there, beautiful and frightened, and I knew he wasn’t fighting for our future. He was fighting against the emptiness my absence would leave in his routine. He loved me most when I was halfway out the door because only then did he have to imagine life without me.
After the pub, we walked towards the Luas stop in the rain. He kept talking quickly, making plans, offering weekends in Galway, saying he would change. Near Harcourt Street, I stopped and told him the kindest truth I could manage: “I don’t think you’re lying. I think you mean it tonight. But I can’t build my life around who you become when you’re afraid.”
He went quiet then. For once, he didn’t argue. He kissed my forehead, and it felt less like romance than a goodbye at a train station. I went home and packed books into old wine boxes. He messaged every day for a week, then every few days, then not at all. I moved on a grey Saturday morning from Heuston, with two suitcases, a backpack, and the odd calm that comes when your life finally starts obeying you.
I still think of him sometimes
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
