A Dublin woman who moved to Belfast to pursue her studies has written an open letter to her former home city.
Christina Kenny is a blogger and PhD student. When she moved to Belfast to work towards her doctorate she began to realise just how much she loved her home and missed being back in Dublin.
She missed all the little things that she had taken for granted, and even the things that she thought she didn’t like.
She penned a letter to Ireland’s capital that may have Dubliners rethinking their own views of their city and everyone else longing to pay Dublin a visit.
Here is Christina’s letter in full:
Dear Dublin,
It’s been a while. I never thought I’d write what I am about to write but I guess life is funny like that. I left your bustling, cold, wet streets on a typical October evening and thought I’d never look back.
I thought I’d never miss the electric atmosphere, the loud, muffled laughter from a music filled pub or the weird and wonderful strangers who made the streets their own.
There was a time when I didn’t like you. There was time when I didn’t understand you. There was a time when you chewed me up and spat me out. Left me lying on the streets, lost and heart-broken. You were there for it all.
What I didn’t realise at the time is that you healed me. When I first met you I was broken. I was looking for a new beginning and you gave me just that. You were fast-paced and wild and I needed that.
I let life get in the way of that precious relationship we were forming and I blamed it partially on you. Then, abruptly, unannounced I upped and left. No note, no explanation, no love lost.
Until some months later when I craved you. I needed you. I needed your street musicians, your eccentric people, the diverse accents that populate your hub and your heart.
I didn’t appreciate you. I took you for granted. I let life cheapen my opinion of you. I see that now.
I’m sorry. I’ll be back. Right now I am in a new city. It isn’t the same. It has yet to beguile me. It has yet to enchant me.
Thank you. For all of it. I needed it.
Always,
Christina.
Dublin is the sort of city that most people would eventually start to miss. It is so full of life and has a vast array of things to do. More about Dublin
While Belfast doesn’t come across so well in Christina’s letter, she hasn’t totally ruled out its potential to beguile or enchant her. It could be just a matter of time. More on Belfast
Christina Kenny has written several articles about cystic fibrosis. She has written both from the point of view of a daughter experiencing the suffering it causes her mother and also as someone who knows that she carries the cystic fibrosis gene.
Click here to read her blog
