I met him outside Whelan’s on a wet Thursday, the kind of Dublin rain that doesn’t fall so much as settle into your clothes and your mood. He was sheltering under the same useless awning as me, holding two paper cups of chips from a takeaway on Camden Street, and he offered me one like it was the most natural thing in the world. I said no first, then took one, then we laughed because the vinegar had gone everywhere. His name was Eoin. He had a soft voice, a crooked front tooth, and a way of listening that made you say more than you meant to.
We were both twenty-nine and both pretending not to be frightened by how fast life was becoming serious. I was working in a pharmacy near Rathmines, living with two strangers and a boiler that screamed at night. He was doing freelance design work from cafés, always talking about Berlin, Lisbon, anywhere with cheaper rent and more light. For the first few months, none of that mattered. We walked along the canal after work. We bought reduced sandwiches in Spar and ate them on benches. We stayed in bed on Sundays while buses hissed past the window and the church bells rang somewhere beyond the rooftops.
Then my mother had a fall. Not a dramatic one, not the kind that sounds big enough to rearrange a life, but it did. She slipped in the kitchen in Tallaght and broke her hip, and after that she became smaller in ways I couldn’t explain. She started ringing me because she couldn’t reach something, because the post looked official, because the silence in the house had changed shape. I began going over three evenings a week, then four. Eoin came with me at first. He fixed a curtain rail, charmed her with terrible jokes, and once made her a shepherd’s pie so salty we all pretended it was lovely.
But I could feel him growing restless. He never complained. That almost made it worse. He would sit in my mother’s front room, scrolling through flights and apartments abroad, then look up too quickly when I came in. One night, as we waited for the Luas at Stephen’s Green, he told me he’d been offered a six-month contract in Amsterdam. “It could become permanent,” he said, looking at the tracks instead of at me.
I remember the exact sound of that moment: the announcement overhead, someone laughing behind us, the wind catching an empty coffee cup and dragging it along the platform. I wanted to be generous. I wanted to be the kind of woman who said, “Go, and I’ll visit, and we’ll make it work.” Instead, I said, “My mam needs me here.” He nodded like he already knew. That was the first time I understood that love can be real and still not be enough to build a bridge.
For weeks we tried not to break up. We became careful with each other, polite in the way people are when they’re carrying something fragile through a crowded room. He stayed at mine less. I stopped asking about Amsterdam. When he kissed me, there was an apology in it. When I held him, there was fear. We weren’t fighting, which made it harder to admit we were ending.
The last night happened in his room in Stoneybatter. He was flying out the next morning from Dublin Airport, two suitcases packed by the door, his desk cleared except for a mug with paintbrushes in it. We’d gone for one drink in a pub near Smithfield, and both of us acted normal so badly that the barman kept leaving us alone. Back at the flat, he made tea. Neither of us drank it.
We got into bed
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
