I wrote this over the course of my life—or perhaps it would be truer to say that my life wrote it through me, etching its lines across the span of a few turbulent months, when the world seemed to tilt and fracture around me. Is it true? That old, elusive question lingers: what is truth? Stories are not rigid certainties, carved in stone, but fluid vessels of perception, and perception, in its shifting, subjective way, becomes its own reality—a mirror held up to the soul rather than a map of fixed facts.
For over a year, this novel languished unfinished, its pages incomplete, particularly in the absence of a third act that could bring its narrative to a satisfying close. Now, at last, it has found that resolution, though I harbor little hope that it will ever grace a publisher’s shelf, polished and bound for sale. It defies the conventions of marketability, blending the raw edges of an autobiographical memoir with the unbound imagination of fiction. Its shape is less a product of structured plot and more a reflection of mood and melancholy, a tapestry woven from the threads of personal experience and emotional resonance. Much of its beating heart later found a new home in A Year to Love, where some of these themes and emotions were distilled and reshaped. Yet, despite that, I could never bring myself to abandon these original words, these first fragile attempts to give voice to what haunted me.
So, I will share it here, unveiling it piece by piece, like fragments of a dream reluctantly revealed to the waking world. Perhaps I seek the feedback of others, a chance to hear how these words land in different hearts. Perhaps, more simply, I yearn for it to be read by someone—someone who has, like its narrator, brushed against the cold edge of despair, who has lain awake in the quiet hours wondering whether life, love, or even humanity itself can endure the weight of its own fragility. It is the story of a man who has lost everything—his purpose, his connections, his hope—and retreats into a self-imposed exile, a solitary retreat where he contemplates not just his own end, but the end of all things, a meditation on the impermanence that defines us all.
It blends first person storytelling and the metafictional breaking of the fourth wall. I want to talk to you…
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Chapter 1
I was human once.
This morning, I walked down from the car park at Brandon’s Point down a winding path filled with stones and mud, slick from so many who had come before me but full of flowers – yellows, reds, and purples – that refused to be trodden down. I needed to feel the ocean’s breath one final time, to taste the salty air sweeping in from the wild Atlantic, air that was full of memories not only of the first time – or now the last – I had seen this place but of all the memories of my Dearest M, thousands of miles west. I wonder if, by now, she had forgotten me or somehow misplaced the memories of our promises to love each other forever. Standing on that ancient rock, Ireland seemed to whisper to me, promising me the peace I had longed for but feared I would never find. Her whisper came not as a sudden gale or tempest, not as a soft shift in the wind as if to kiss me goodbye, but in the pod of dolphins she had brought to bid me farewell, that one last sign that I needed so that tonight I would be at peace.
I stood there on a little white and grey stone outcropping, as I had done so many times this month, staring down at the ocean beneath me, with the tides crashing against the shore. For a time that seemed too long, I imagined the cold grip that water must have, the pull of the tide, and how it would treat my body had I just the courage to throw myself into its embrace. Would it dash me against the rocks, the crags mauling my flesh, or would it carry me out to sea as if to return me in some way to the land beyond the clear horizon? Could I disappear beneath the waves, with all my sorrow drowning me beneath the surf? But that was not my place, not my time. No, I still needed to give you my story.
I have spent every day of the last month trying to live in Ireland to find the peace I once knew this land could give me. But I have abandoned Ireland for the one who abandoned me. I have spent my days on the road, traveling from the northern coasts to the southern hills, stopping here and there to see the sites or to hear stories, intentionally exploring every inch of the ground before me to make the most of my new life, sometimes with my bare feet on the ever-green grass of this island hungry to feel the energy beneath me. I have lain in a meadow for a long afternoon, watching the sun pass slowly overhead. The wind bit at my skin as I stood on her coasts, a reminder of the life I had once imagined but failed to find. Even the grass under my feet seemed indifferent to my sorrow. Ireland and I have battled over the indifference shown to one another this month.
Every night, I would find myself in one pub or the other, having my fill of Guinness, laughter, and friends – all the while surrounded by the voices of those who carry a tune so sweet as to stop the crowd’s clamor dead in their feet. For years since my first arrival on this island, I have longed to call it home, to savor the stillness that envelops me here, where I find true harmony with life. Something about Ireland has reached into my soul like no place I have seen, lived, or that has invaded my dreams. Finally, after so much heartache and loss, I have come to live here, live among her people, and prove true my dream. There is ancient magic pulsing through the land, whispering promises of healing to wounded souls like mine, inviting each of us to rediscover ourselves amidst the green hills and rolling waves. But I did not come here to heal; instead, I have come to confront myself and embrace my end.
No matter where I have traveled on this island, I have been asked the same question: “What brings you to Ireland?” Did they ask that of the Tuatha Dé Dannan? Or the other peoples who have escaped wrath in the Lebor Gabála Érenn? I never know the lie to tell them. I struggle to find a truthful response. In the past, my answer was unwavering and sincere. Now, stripped of everything that defined me, I can only offer a façade. The truth is, is that I no longer have faith, hope, or love, and if I had to choose just one place to be where I think those things are possible, it is here. This time, I came not because I wished to but because, in some way, my love told me to, and I had hoped to find something of my Dearest M here. Instead, I found only Ireland.
An ancient voice once said faith, hope, and love are essential. Love may be the greatest, but faith is the foundation of existence. Perhaps we place our faith in a deity, nature, or the meaning of suffering— or finding a soulmate to stand by us through life’s darkest moments — but without faith, our lives lose purpose. Hope keeps us moving forward—toward the light after the storm, the shore when we’re lost. It defines us, shaping our dreams for better days, for answers, for peace. We hope it will all make sense in the end, that our hell will give way to serenity, and that hope will bring us home. I have tried, but even here, among ruins of ancient abbeys and stone circles, I cannot find the faith I had hoped for.
Faith and hope give us life when the truth murders us. They keep us breathing in a world that has already suffocated us. They intertwine our imagination like the flame of a candle that wraps around the wick, carried about by some fabled geriatric before the dawn of electricity to see what the scraping sound at the door is – in the midnight hour, sometime between dusk and dawn, life and death, he walks holding this patinaed brass lantern, with faith in his God that nothing can harm him and a hope that the sound at the door is some poor lost soul in need of shelter or perhaps his prodigal child finally returning home. But we all know the truth. We all know the story. He does it out of love. Love—contrary to that ancient wisdom—is not the greatest. Love destroys, leaving cities in ruins and hearts broken. It betrayed me, made promises it never kept, and took not just her when it left but the last of who I could ever be.
What is a man when he loses faith, hope, and love?
He is not even a ghost in a corpse. Instead, he is the fragrance of the rainstorm that has passed over the petals of the flowers that absorbed all they could of the water of life, and the ground has started to dry. The clouds have returned to white; the rainbow has been rolled up for another day. Only the scent of rain remains, and that becomes a foolish memory. Not a trace remains of a man once he has lost it all, just the memory that torments him every waking hour, every dreaded moment of sleep. He is not even human. He just is, and it is a wretched existence now mine.
I suppose, dear reader, you’re wondering why I am telling you all of this. Why should this matter to someone I’ve never met and never will? I fear I must tell you this because I will lose myself completely if I don’t. At least, if you have this story of mine, at the very least, something of my… experience, my life, of me, will remain when I leave Ireland. But promise me that unlike so many, you will not leave me until the story is done.
A part of me writes this to leave something behind, but also to truly examine my life. To accept my consequences.
Among the last words she said to me before she carried my heart forever away from me was, “Now you can live in Ireland.”
We sat on that bed in Costa Rica, surrounded by beautiful yet unfamiliar terrain, a place chosen precisely because it was meant to be a reset, not for us – we would never have needed such a thing – but from the lives we had endured alone only to find each other. We had decided that before we started our life together, we would spend several months traveling the world – first in Costa Rica, to Ireland, then to Tennessee to live what we had decided was the love we deserved. Something changed. Maybe it was her fear, just as she said, that she could not maintain a relationship for more than two or three years. Perhaps she had told me the truth, that she feared everything new. Or maybe it was me, and she was trying to protect me. But there she sat, tears streaming down her face, telling me she would not go with me. She had to go back home. But I could go live in Ireland.
Damned Ireland. Since the first moment I saw her, she held my soul and heart and played havoc with my mind more than any lover. I cannot tell you if it was her weathered landscapes or decaying ruins or the signs of life found around each bend in the roads too narrow. I needed to sleep in her arms every chance I could, like a sailor always finding a home in a port-of-call between steams, and that same port was never far from his mind as he worked night and day fighting the perils of the sea. She was the one I ran to when life was too difficult to manage. Every time I left, she would tug at me, a constant pull, a thread wound tight around my chest, drawing me back to the place I had not even realized was home. Somehow, I had forgotten her when I found my Dearest M. Ireland had been my once and future home for the last few years, with every single thing I did meant to get me to Ireland one day, someday, but not like this. I had been ready to give her up for my Dearest M, and now, I was being forced to skulk back to her, ashamed, ordered into exile from my current love to my previous love. “Go live in Ireland.”
So that is what I am doing. Living. But I have lived here so that I could honor her request, and in some way, some adolescent way, I can make amends and win her back through whatever penance was required of me. I am unsure if I can ever use the word “home” again unless I am with her. Home is not an address but a sense of belonging to a place – or a person – that transcends our need for physical location. I have learned the true meaning of the word here, or instead in Ireland, I have learned how to express how I feel about her in words I did not know existed. It would be unfair for me to say I am home here, then. Instead, I am living in Ireland; this is the lie I tell people.
I sit here, pacing around the room or sitting on the bridal suite’s rather sizeable four-pillared marriage bed. I am nervous for some reason. “I don’t want to be late,” I tell her as if she was still here. Yet another taunt from the universe as to my present condition and almost a push, I think, into the finality of it all – along with a wedding reception just out my second-story window. This is a place I could have taken my one true love, my dearest M. I can feel the strumming of the guitar against my soul, with the fiddle adding just a touch of all that I can remember from my life in West Virginia and here in Ireland as if the music calls to something deeper within myself. Still, as I have done so often this last month, I feel nothing, perhaps on purpose. Oddly enough, I am in the James Joyce room with this wing named after the great Irish poets. I would get Joyce, wouldn’t I? “Think you’re escaping and run into yourself.” I have spent this month proving him wrong.
Ballyseede Castle is the place I have chosen – or rather, the only place available – for my last night here in Ireland. I wanted the Grand Hotel in Tralee. I’ve dined there every evening for the past two weeks to build up a presence that would be missed. It is a fine hotel, old but new all the same. It sits on Denny Street, where, upon leaving, I am greeted by a monument to the fallen Irish in this land’s various wars for independence and only a few blocks from my favorite pub. It was not available tonight, so I chose Ballyseede. This is where I want to end my life in Ireland, fulfilling her final request. I do not know what is next, but I did not find her here, nor solace, penance, or redemption.
This stone fortress is indifferent to the storm raging inside me, a storm I’ll soon silence. Even the distant memories of war etched into this land feel less real than the battlefield of my mind, where love and loss still waged their endless conflict. It is a historic castle – like the ones we tend to think of in the English countryside, and rightfully so, given the history of the owners of this castle. At the gates stand a weathered and defiant sentinel to forgotten sacrifices when the Irish fought the Irish. Not much is ever said – save maybe some throwaway lines here and here in a rebel song or two – about what happened between the Free State Government and the Irish Republican Army who had won the measure of freedom for Ireland. But here, here is a marker buried in the middle of a grove of trees, backed by a stone wall, holding back the fields behind it, staring straight at my face, telling the depths men will go to hold on to hope in this land. Here, IRA soldiers (Óglaigh na hÉireann, that is, warriors of Ireland), stripped for their valor, were used as human shields thrown against the jagged edge of political vengeance.
This land remembers, even if others wish to forget. “The Irish have long memories,” someone once told me. Among these stories, I stand alone—my grief unremarkable to history. But this is where I will finally surrender — on this land, scarred by wars, still holding its silence, hoping the pain will pass. Here, where the weight of history presses down like the stones of the castle, it feels right to lay down the burden I’ve carried.
After taking the winding road, you are met by the imposing view of the castle. Deep within, I feel too redneck, rustic, or hillbilly to be here. This is a fine place. For gentlemen and ladies, for the elite. Not for me. Not for a poor boy raised in South Louisiana, often living off the government’s dole. Not for me, who has tried to rise above the limitations to which he was born. Not for one who no longer appreciates beauty, romance, or, I guess, history. Something died within me that day she left. I feel it here as I look over the green gardens with the flowers of whites, reds, and purples. I can hear the trees move about in the wind. At any other time, in any other life, I would have found peace here, marveling at the charm this castle suddenly held. Now, standing amidst all this beauty, I feel only the hollow ache of what’s been lost.
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You, reader, are a shadow among these pages, a whisper in the margins, and I await to find your voice in the echoes of my thoughts. But for my Dearest M, even now, I cannot say her name for fear of such pain, a pain that is more injurious than any loss, compounded by loss, that I have suffered in my life. So, if I never get to say her name, please understand. I just can’t.
(Too be continued)
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