I used to think love was the way he looked for my hand in crowded places. On Camden Street after a gig in Whelan’s, in the rain outside the Luas stop, in the queue for chips when everyone was shouting over each other, he would reach back without looking, and I would put my fingers through his like I had been expected. That small certainty felt like a future.
We were together nearly two years before we moved into a flat in Rathmines. It was above a shop, with windows that shook when the buses went by and a kitchen so narrow we had to turn sideways to pass each other. I loved it at first. I loved buying a second mug for him in George’s Street Arcade. I loved seeing his runners beside mine at the door. I loved saying “our place” to friends, as if the words themselves had built something safe.
The first month was all candles and takeaway boxes, watching the lights come on over Dublin from our tiny sitting room. Then ordinary life arrived, not dramatically, just one unwashed plate at a time. He left wet towels on the bed. I stacked bills in a drawer and pretended I knew what I was doing. He liked silence in the mornings. I needed conversation. He wanted friends over without warning. I wanted one clean evening where nobody sat on our couch spilling beer and telling the same stories.
None of it sounded serious enough to leave over, which made it harder. If he had cheated, or shouted, or done one unforgivable thing, I might have known where to put the pain. Instead, it was small daily loneliness. He would be in the same room and I would miss him. I would tell him about my day and watch his eyes stay on his phone. He would kiss my forehead and say, “I’m wrecked, love,” and somehow the word love began to feel like a lid being placed over everything we weren’t saying.
One Saturday in November, we walked along the Grand Canal to try to feel like ourselves again. The trees were bare, the water was dark, and people were passing with coffees and dogs and lives that looked easier than ours. I told him I felt invisible in the flat. He said he felt judged the second he opened the door. I said I was tired of being the one who noticed what needed doing. He said he was tired of feeling like a disappointment.
We ended up sitting on a bench near Portobello, both crying quietly because we still cared. That was the strangest part. There was no villain. He was not cruel, and I was not perfect. We were two people who had been wonderful on weekends and terrible on Tuesdays. We had mistaken chemistry for compatibility, tenderness for teamwork, and longing for love.
The real ending came a week later over breakfast. He had burnt the toast, and I had snapped at him, and then we both just stopped. He looked so young standing there in his old hoodie, holding the knife over the butter, and I suddenly saw how exhausted we both were from trying to force our lives into the same shape. I said, “I don’t think we’re making each other happy.” He nodded before I had even finished. That nod hurt more than any argument because it was honest.
We gave notice on the flat. For the last month, we became kinder than we had been while trying to stay together. We divided books, pans, bedding, the little plant his mother had given us. We ate dinner on the floor after selling the table. Once, he made me tea without asking, and I nearly changed my mind because kindness can be very confusing when you are grieving someone who is still in front of you.
On the final morning, we carried boxes down the stairs while buses roared past like nothing important was happening. He hugged me outside the shop, and for the first time in months, it felt simple. Not like a promise. Not like a demand. Just goodbye.
I used to think living together would prove we were in love. Instead, it showed us the truth. Love is not only reaching for someone’s hand in the crowd. It is also the washing, the rent, the quiet mornings, the mood you bring home, the space you make for another person to be fully human. We had loved each other, but we had not known how to live with each other. Learning the difference broke my heart, but it also gave me back my life.
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
