I met her outside Grogan’s on a wet Friday evening, the kind of Dublin rain that doesn’t fall so much as hang in the air and quietly ruin your hair. I was twenty-eight, working in a print shop near Camden Street, convinced I had already missed whatever grand thing life was supposed to become. She was Spanish, in Ireland on a one-year contract with a tech company, and she asked me for a lighter even though she didn’t smoke. Later she admitted she only wanted an excuse to speak to me.
Her name was Elena. We became one of those accidental Dublin couples who build a life out of small routines. Coffee near St Stephen’s Green, walks along the Grand Canal, cheap noodles after work, Sunday mornings in bed while the bells from a nearby church made us feel like decent people. She loved the city in a way I had forgotten to. She’d stop on Ha’penny Bridge to take photos of the Liffey, even when the sky was the colour of dishwater. “You don’t know how lucky you are,” she’d say, and I’d pretend not to hear because Irish people are allergic to being told anything beautiful.
We were together for nine months when she told me her contract was ending. I knew it was coming, but I had lived like a child, believing that if we didn’t discuss it, it wouldn’t arrive. She wanted me to come with her to Valencia. I said I needed time. What I meant was I was afraid. My father had just been diagnosed with heart trouble, my mother was leaning on me more, and I had never lived outside Dublin. I made it sound noble, but really I was terrified of becoming a stranger somewhere else.
Our last month together was a slow argument disguised as ordinary life. We didn’t shout much. We just became careful. She folded her clothes into suitcases while I made tea neither of us drank. I told her I loved her, which was true, and she told me love was not the same as choosing someone, which was also true. On her last night we went to The Long Hall because it was where we had gone after our third date. She wore a green coat I loved. I remember the red lamps, the polished wood, the noise of people laughing around us like the world had no respect for endings.
At the airport the next morning, she held my face in both hands and said, “If you change your mind, don’t take too long.” I nodded like a man in a film, like someone brave and tragic. Then she walked through security, turned once, and was gone. I went home on the bus with a pain in my chest that felt almost impressive, like grief was proof I had loved properly.
For three weeks, we texted constantly. Then less. Then hardly at all. I told myself she was busy building a new life. I told myself I was being kind by letting her go. I even went on a date with a woman from Rathmines and spent the entire evening comparing the way she laughed to Elena’s, which was unfair to everyone involved.
Five months after she left, I got a message from her sister. Not Elena. Her sister. It said, “I think you should know.” Under it was a photo of Elena standing on a balcony in Valencia, one hand on her stomach, visibly pregnant.
I stared at the picture until my phone went dark. Then I rang Elena. No answer. I rang again. Nothing. By the time she called back, I was walking around Merrion Square in circles, shaking with anger and fear. She sounded tired when she said hello. I didn’t recognise her voice at first.
“Were you going to tell me?” I asked.
She was quiet for so long I could hear traffic on her end, scooters and voices and a life I wasn’t part of. Then she said, “I tried.”
She told me she had found out two weeks before leaving Ireland. She had bought the test from a pharmacy on Grafton Street and taken it in the bathroom of our flat while I was at work. She said she wanted to tell me that night, then the next night, then at the airport. But every conversation we had was already full of fear. She had asked me to choose her and I hadn’t. She didn’t want me to come to Spain out of obligation or panic. “I wanted to be wanted,” she said. “Not rescued.”
I said cruel things. Not unforgivable things, but close. I asked how she could take my child away. She asked how I could call the baby mine only when
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
