I met him on the Green Line Luas on a wet Tuesday evening, the kind of Dublin rain that doesn’t fall so much as hang around you. I was standing near the doors at Harcourt, trying to balance a tote bag, a broken umbrella, and a coffee I had no business buying at six in the evening. When the tram jolted, the coffee went straight onto his sleeve. Not a splash. A proper disaster.
He looked down at it, then at me, and smiled like I had handed him a bouquet. “That’s one way to start a conversation,” he said. His name was Cian. He was getting off at Ranelagh, same as me, and by the time we reached the stop he had told me he worked in a bookshop, hated coriander, and believed the best view in Dublin was from the top front seat of the 46A on a clear morning.
I gave him my number because he asked without any games. That night, he texted a photo of his stained sleeve with the caption, “Evidence of our origin story.” I laughed out loud in my flat in Rathmines, which was rare then. I had been lonely in a quiet, respectable way. Work, messages left unread, dinners eaten standing up, Sundays that stretched too long. Cian arrived like someone had opened a window.
Our first proper date was in Grogan’s, where he ordered toasted sandwiches and told me he liked places where people didn’t pretend to be shinier than they were. We walked afterwards through Temple Bar, avoiding puddles and hen parties, and he held my hand as if he had always known the shape of it. By the second week, I was waiting for his messages the way I used to wait for exam results. By the third, I knew the sound of his key in my door and the exact warmth of his shoulder on the Luas home.
That is the part people don’t warn you about. Love can feel healthy and still become the thing you use to avoid yourself. I stopped going to yoga. I cancelled plans with friends because Cian might be free. If he didn’t text by lunchtime, my stomach tightened. If he called, the whole day improved. He became my weather, my appetite, my proof that I was worth choosing.
He wasn’t cruel. That almost made it harder to understand. He was affectionate, funny, sometimes distracted, often late. He loved me in the way he knew how, but I needed him in a way that scared us both. I remember one night outside Whelan’s, after a gig, when he said, gently, “I feel like I’m responsible for all your happiness.” I told him that was ridiculous, then cried in the taxi home because I knew it was partly true.
The worst of it happened in December. He went to Galway for a weekend with old college friends. I told him to have a great time, then spent two days checking when he was online. I walked along the Grand Canal pretending to enjoy the cold air, but really I was refreshing my phone inside my pocket. When he finally rang on Sunday, cheerful and tired, I answered with a voice sharpened by fear. We had our first real fight. He said he loved me but couldn’t be my only source of oxygen.
That sentence stayed with me. My only source of oxygen. It sounded dramatic, but it was true. I had made him into a cure, and no person can survive being someone else’s cure for long.
We broke up in January, not in a stormy way, but over tea in a café near St Stephen’s Green. Outside, the city was moving as usual, buses sighing at the kerb, office workers rushing past with scarves pulled up to their chins. Cian cried first, which surprised me. He said he didn’t want to disappear from my life, but he also didn’t want us to keep hurting each other by calling it romance. I wanted to beg. Instead, I held the mug with both hands and nodded because some small, adult part of me knew he was right.
The weeks after were ugly. I missed him physically, like a habit my body kept reaching for
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
