People used to say they wanted what we had. They said it at weddings, at house parties in Rathmines, over pints after work, always with that same little sigh, as if myself and Mark had found some secret door into an easier kind of love. We had the photos to prove it too. Us laughing on the Samuel Beckett Bridge. Us with flour on our faces in the kitchen of our rented flat near Portobello. Us outside a cosy pub after a Sunday walk through Dublin, his arm around my shoulders, my smile so wide it looked impossible to fake.
But it was fake by then. Not all of it, but enough of it. The worst part was that we were both good people. There was no grand betrayal, no villain in the story. Just two people who had learned how to perform happiness so well that everyone believed it except us.
We had been together seven years. We met in a queue for coffee near Trinity, both late for work, both annoyed at the rain. He made me laugh by pretending the weather was personally targeting him. For a long time, that was our rhythm. He softened things. I steadied them. We were a team.
Then life got heavier. His mother got sick in Galway. I was working long hours in a job I was afraid to leave. We had a miscarriage that we told almost nobody about, because we did not know how to say it out loud without breaking apart in front of people. After that, something quiet entered the flat and stayed there. We were kind to each other, but carefully. We stopped arguing because arguments require hope. Mostly we passed each other cups of tea and asked practical questions. Did you pay the electricity? Are you home for dinner? Did you ring your mam?
The night everything came apart was at our friend Elaine’s engagement drinks in Temple Bar. We almost did not go. I remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror putting on earrings while Mark sat on the edge of the bed scrolling through his phone. I said, “We can still cancel.” He said, “We can’t keep cancelling everything.” That was true, but the way he said it made me feel like a duty, not a person.
At the pub, we became ourselves again, or the version everyone knew. Mark told stories. I laughed at the right moments. Someone took a picture of us and said, “You two give me faith.” I felt a strange panic rise in my throat, because I could see us from the outside and we looked lovely. His hand was warm on my back. My head fit under his chin. We looked like proof that love could last.
Later, Elaine’s fiancé raised a glass and said that he hoped they would be as solid as us. The table cheered. Mark smiled. I smiled. And then I looked at him properly. His eyes were wet. Not with joy. With exhaustion.
We left early and walked toward the river without speaking. It was one of those sharp Dublin nights when the city feels rinsed clean by rain. Near the Ha’penny Bridge, I stopped and said, “Are we lying to everyone, or are we lying to ourselves?”
He did not pretend not to understand. That was the mercy of it. He leaned against the railing and put his hands over his face. When he looked up, he seemed older than he had that morning. He said, “I don’t know how to get back to you.”
I had imagined many endings to us, usually dramatic ones. I would discover something unforgivable. He would say something cruel. I would pack a bag in anger. But the truth was gentler and more
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
