💔😢 33 YEARS OLD, SINGLE MUM IN DUBLIN. YESTERDAY I WALKED OUT OF THE SUPERMARKET IN TEARS My name is Aoife Murphy, I’m 33 and I’m raising my eight-year-old son Lucas on my own in Crumlin, Dublin. For anyone who doesn’t live here: the media describes Dublin as the city of pubs, tech and the good life. But my reality is completely different: alarm at six in the morning, endless waits for the bus and Luas, and a retail assistant’s salary at a clothing store on Henry Street that disappears before it even hits my account. On €1,320 a month in Dublin you don’t live: you just try to survive. Between rent that’s gone up to €820, Lucas’s school lunches, electricity, gas and €54 for the Leap card, the money evaporates in the first few days of the month. On paper I had only €27 left until the end of the month. Everything became unbearable two months ago, when I received a registered letter: a notice for a bank debt of €5,950, taken out to cover the previous months’ expenses. I lived in constant terror that at any moment they would freeze my account. Last Tuesday Lucas came home from school and showed me a flyer: – Mum, my classmates are signing up for swimming. It costs €135 with registration… can I go too? I looked into his hopeful eyes, and then I remembered that I had paid the last €200 that same morning into the account to cover the debt. The remaining balance: €27. I stroked his head and explained that this month it just wasn’t possible. Lucas smiled sadly and said: “Don’t worry, Mum, it’s all good, I didn’t really like swimming that much anyway.” At only eight years old he was already trying to protect me so I wouldn’t feel guilty. That moment broke my heart into a thousand pieces. The next day I went to the local Tesco to buy something for dinner. At the checkout, when the total was €29.60, my card was declined: insufficient funds. I was only three euro short, but the transaction didn’t go through. The people in the queue started sighing, shifting fr
