I knew it was over before she said anything. It was in the way she kept both hands on the wheel after she parked, as if letting go might make the whole thing real. We were in the short-term car park outside Dublin Airport, rain sliding down the windscreen in thin silver lines, buses hissing past with people going somewhere, anywhere, except back to the life we had made.
She was flying to Berlin for a job she had told me was temporary. Six months, maybe a year. We had practised saying it like that in our kitchen in Drumcondra, over burnt toast and mugs of tea. Temporary. Not goodbye. Not the end. Just a stretch of time to get through. But in the weeks before the flight, something had shifted. She stopped leaving her rings on the bathroom shelf. I stopped asking if she wanted me to visit in October. We became polite in the way people are when they are afraid of breaking something already cracked.
We met three years earlier in The Cobblestone in Smithfield. She had laughed at me because I ordered a gin and tonic in a place where everyone else seemed to have a pint of Guinness and a story. She was from Clontarf, sharp and kind, with a habit of touching your sleeve when she wanted you to really listen. I was from Mayo, working in a café near George’s Street Arcade, pretending Dublin wasn’t swallowing me whole. She made the city smaller for me. With her, the buses made sense, the cold walks along the Liffey had purpose, even the rent felt like something we could beat if we were clever enough.
Our love was never dramatic at the start. It was practical and tender. She brought me soup when I had the flu. I fixed the broken drawer in her flat badly, and she kept it anyway. We moved in together near Griffith Park because it was the only place we could afford that had enough light for her plants. On Sundays, we walked to Phibsborough for coffee, then home through streets of red brick and wet leaves. I thought that was what forever looked like. Not fireworks. Just somebody knowing how you take your tea.
Then her mother got sick. Then my hours were cut. Then her job became unbearable. Then I became quiet, and she became tired of guessing what was wrong. We didn’t have one terrible betrayal. Nobody threw plates. Nobody cheated. We just kept putting our pain down between us like shopping bags until there was no room to sit together anymore.
In the airport car park, she turned off the engine but didn’t move. The dashboard clock said 6:14 in the morning. Her flight was at 8. I remember the ridiculous details. A receipt curled in the cup holder. Her blue suitcase lying across the back seat. The smell of her shampoo, coconut and something floral, filling the car and making me feel like I was already missing her while she was still beside me.
“I don’t think you should come in,” she said.
I nodded too quickly, like I had expected it, though I had imagined carrying her bag to departures, buying her a terrible coffee, kissing her at the barrier with brave faces. I had imagined a film version of ourselves. Instead, we sat beneath a grey Dublin sky while families dragged suitcases towards Terminal 1 and taxi drivers smoked by the kerb.
“Is it because of Berlin?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Berlin is just where I’m going.”
That sentence did it. It landed softly, but it ended everything.
She cried then, which made it worse, because part of me had wanted her to be cruel. Cruelty would have given me something to hate. But she was only sad, and so was I. She said she loved me, but she didn’t know how to stay without disappearing. I said I loved her too, but I had been using love like a blanket, pulling it over problems I didn’t know how to fix. We apologised for things too late. For silence. For sharp words. For making each other feel lonely in the same room.
When she reached for my hand, I held it like it was something borrowed. Her fingers were cold. We sat there for another minute, maybe five. Time behaved strangely. Then she got out, opened the back door, and lifted her suitcase. I stepped out to help, but she said, “I need to do this bit myself.”
So I stood beside the car with my hands hanging uselessly at my sides. She hugged me once, hard, her face pressed into my shoulder. I wanted to ask her to stay. I wanted to promise I would change by lunchtime. But there are moments when begging is just another way of not listening. So I kissed her forehead and said, “Mind yourself.”
She walked towards the terminal without turning around. I watched until
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
