I met him on a wet Thursday outside the Abbey Theatre, both of us pretending we were not bothered by the rain. My bus had disappeared from the screen on Eden Quay, as Dublin buses sometimes do, like they have entered a private arrangement with God. He was standing beside me with a broken umbrella and a paper bag from a bookshop tucked under his coat.
“You’ll get pneumonia holding that like a newborn,” I said, nodding at the bag.
He looked down at it, then at me, and smiled in a way that made his whole face change. “It’s a birthday present for my sister. If the book gets wet, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
That was how it began. Not with violins or a cinematic glance across a crowded room, but with a soggy pavement, a cancelled bus, and two strangers laughing at the weather. We ended up walking together as far as O’Connell Bridge, where he told me his name was Ciarán and that he worked in a lab in Trinity. I told him I worked in a hotel near Stephen’s Green and was trying to save enough to move out of a house share in Drumcondra where the heating had two settings: off and argument.
We should have parted there, but instead he asked if I wanted coffee, and I said yes before I could invent a reason not to. We went into a small café near Temple Bar, the kind of place tourists find by accident and locals pretend not to like. He listened properly. That was the thing I noticed first. Not in the “waiting for his turn to speak” way, but as if every ordinary detail I gave him mattered. My mother’s illness. My fear of becoming stuck. My habit of buying notebooks and never writing in them. He made me feel like my life was not a messy collection of unfinished things, but something still becoming.
For three months, Dublin softened around him. We walked along the Grand Canal after work, sharing chips from a paper bag. We drank pints in The Long Hall, where he told me he wanted to live abroad one day, somewhere warm enough that rain would feel like an event instead of a personality trait. On Sundays, we went to Howth when we could afford the Dart and sat on the rocks with our coats zipped to our chins. He would point out seals as if he had personally arranged them for me.
But I was not ready to be loved well. That sounds dramatic, but it is the plainest truth I know. My mother had died the previous winter, and I had convinced myself I was fine because I was functioning. I went to work. I paid rent. I answered messages with cheerful little exclamation marks. But grief had made a room inside me where I kept the lights off. Ciarán would stand at the door of that room, gentle and patient, and I would resent him for noticing it existed.
He never pushed. That almost made it worse. If he had been cruel, or careless, I could have left him cleanly. Instead he remembered things. He brought me ginger tea when I lost my voice. He fixed the chain on my bike outside Heuston in the freezing cold. He once crossed the city after midnight because I sent a text saying only, “I don’t feel like myself.” He arrived with milk, bread, and no questions.
I loved him, though I did not say it. I loved him in the frightened way people love when they think happiness is a trick that might be taken back if named aloud.
The ending happened in Merrion Square. It was late April, one of those rare evenings when Dublin looks washed and golden, as if the city has forgiven everyone. We had planned to go for dinner, but I knew before I saw him that I was going to ruin it. He was sitting on a bench under the trees, turning his phone over in his hands.
He had been offered a research position in Berlin. Six months, maybe longer. His face was bright with the news and careful with me. He said he wanted me to come visit. He said we could make plans. He said it did not have to be the end.
I remember the shame of it more than the words. I told him I could not do distance. I told him I was too tired. I told him it was better to stop now before we hurt each other. What I meant was: I cannot survive missing another person. I cannot hold on to you and grieve properly and become myself at the same time. But I did not have the courage to say that, so I made myself sound colder than I was.
He listened, just as he always had. Then he nodded and looked away toward the Georgian doors across the street. “I think you’ll regret saying it like that,” he said softly. Not cruelly. Just sadly.
He was right. I regretted it before I reached the corner.
We hugged goodbye, and he smelled of rain and laundry powder. I wanted him to fight me, which was
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
