I met him on a wet Thursday evening outside Trinity, the kind of Dublin rain that doesn’t fall so much as hang in the air and slowly claim you. I had just finished a late shift in a lab near Pearse Street, smelling faintly of ethanol and hand soap, and I was trying to convince myself that a packet of crisps counted as dinner. He was standing under the same shop awning, holding two takeaway coffees and laughing at his own bad luck. One cup had collapsed in the rain, leaking down his sleeve. “That one was for my boss,” he said, as if I had asked. “So I suppose I’m unemployed now.”
I laughed harder than the joke deserved. That was the first thing I noticed about us: conversation didn’t need pushing. It rolled. We walked as far as Dawson Street together because neither of us had an umbrella and both of us were pretending not to mind. He was a primary school teacher in Rathmines, originally from Sligo, with a face that changed completely when he smiled. I told him I worked in chemistry, and he said, “That’s dangerous information. I’ll be making metaphors all evening.” He did. Most of them were terrible. I still remember them.
Our first proper date was at Grogan’s, standing outside because there were no seats, eating toasties off napkins and talking about things people usually save for later. His mother’s illness. My father leaving when I was twelve. How I had built my life around being dependable and how he had built his around being liked. It sounds heavy written down, but it wasn’t. It felt strangely light, like setting down bags you didn’t realise you were carrying. Afterwards we walked through Dublin until the streets emptied, past George’s Street, past the Olympia, over the Liffey where the city looked softer in the dark.
For three months, it was like that. Nothing dramatic, no grand declarations, just a quiet, undeniable pull. He left voice notes on his lunch break, full of children shouting in the background. I sent him photos of my failed dinners. We kissed at the Grand Canal after he made me laugh so much I spilled coffee on my coat. We spent a Sunday in St Stephen’s Green reading separate books with our legs touching on the bench, which felt more intimate than anything I’d known in years. I wasn’t a person who believed in signs, but I started noticing his name everywhere. On buses. In email chains. On a receipt once, as if the universe had become a teenager with a crush.
Then the timing arrived, as it always does, wearing ordinary clothes. He told me in a café near Baggot Street. His sister in Sligo was pregnant and unwell, his mother’s condition had worsened, and he had been offered a teaching post closer to home. He had applied before we met, back when Dublin felt lonely to him and leaving seemed simple. He hadn’t expected me. That was exactly how he said it, looking at his hands. “I didn’t expect you.”
I wanted to be noble. I wanted to say love could handle distance, that trains existed, that people had survived worse than the N4 on a Friday evening. But underneath all that, I knew myself. I had spent too much of my life waiting for people to come back. Waiting by windows, by phones, by promises. I had only recently learned the peace of choosing people who were fully here. And he knew himself too. His family needed him in a way that wasn’t temporary. He couldn’t split his heart neatly between Dublin and home, and I couldn’t pretend not to notice when I was getting the smaller half.
We tried for a few weeks anyway, because chemistry can make sensible people foolish.
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
