I received a message recently from a lady who had sat near me in a coffee shop in Dublin.
She was sitting with her family and their friends, when she saw me come in the door with my family.
She said she had followed me on Instagram for a long time and so had her friend, who was sitting beside her. ⠀
She said they were both too embarrassed to say anything to me, so they just smiled, and then more smiles were exchanged when her son ended up playing with mine, discussing their mutual love for dinosaurs. ⠀
She said you probably don’t remember that day, and that she should have said something, and I was too embarrassed to tell her that I remembered every second. ⠀
When I walked in the door and saw a family just like us, sitting with another family, hanging out, drinking coffee on a Sunday morning, it made me feel so sad.
Such a simple thing, that we were missing so much, that we had taken for granted before. Because here we were, in a city we didn’t really know, a city that didn’t really know us. ⠀
I sat at the window in that coffee shop with my family on that day, and we drank coffee, and we watched people walking past, and I wondered when things would feel better. I wondered when we would start to feel a little less lonely. ⠀
How funny that a few months later she messaged, to say that she should have said something. Because maybe it would have made a difference.⠀
And how funny that I remembered everything, because I should have said something too. Because maybe it would have made a difference ❤️
