This is an anonymous story collected from the public as part of the Human Archive Project
Being born in Belfast at the beginning of The Troubles, around 1972, into a family where they did not subscribe to a religion on purpose - they came from a political background of a socialist and a communist nature through my grandparents - we were brought up neither being protestant or catholic. We were brought up not to be labelled as either, not to be nationalist, not to be loyalist, or anything like that. It made you feel... I found myself feeling like you didn’t belong in the place you belonged, like you were from a place and yet you did not conform to either label that was being put on you by people. Increasingly so throughout The Troubles people questioned “Are you Protestant?”, “Are you Catholic? “, “Where do you live?”, “What is your tradition?”, “What do you subscribe to?”, “Where do you go to church?”…. when the answer was - to none of them.
Growing up I did not really understand why I didn’t belong to either and feeling that I didn’t belong somehow, because I didn’t belong to either of those situations. Then at 16 when I moved to London, having lived through this… this identity driven society that I grew up in, to then move to a culture that was diverse and yet people had no clue about what being British or Irish living in Northern Ireland means. To them they were just like, “What is Belfast? Do we own Belfast? Is it even in Ireland? What’s Ireland?”. Or they said: “Oh you’re just a Paddy then.”
Whether you’re Protestant or Catholic , actually realising that it really mattered so little to other people - all this stuff that had been enforced on you growing up and as a child while people were actually killing each other over for the whole of your childhood - and then you moved somewhere and most people didn’t care anything about it until it landed on their doorstep…
I suppose when you had such things as Warrington bombings and Manchester bombings, and suddenly it was on their doorstep - then whether you were Protestant or Catholic, if you had been brought up in Northern Ireland it wouldn’t have mattered, you were just a Paddy who’d been responsible for the bombs in England. Then there would be terrible anti-Irish feeling which was another thing. It makes you really think that for people who were brought up with one tradition or another, when you go outside your ‘zone’ you’re suddenly labelled whatever they want to label you.
London never really sat well with me, I never really felt at home there. I love going, I enjoy it, it’s great when you go visiting. So I decided to go to the other end of the coin - and I moved to Dublin where again, you know, it was difficult, you know, to put up with people saying, ‘Who are you? Where are you from?’ and you say who you are and where you’re from, and you give your name and you say, ‘Well, I’m from Belfast’ but then that throws up an image to someone from Dublin about who you must be and your name is a Catholic name and why are you living there and so there again you’re being stereotyped and labelled again from a few little pinpoints of information, a few bits of detail that people make assumptions from.
My youth was built up of people making assumptions on you and you trying your hardest not to fall foul of the category you’re put into as well. You’re scared to sort of talk out of turn say the wrong thing to the wrong person. To give away the wrong information about who you are where you’re from because actually you don't fall into any of those categories, and that was always very difficult, as a child you always wanted to belong, you wanted to belong to something but you didn’t know what you wanted to belong to, you just didn’t want to be that person that was different, but yet you were, and it’s only as an adult you can look back and embrace your differences but it was a very difficult thing to grow up within Northern Ireland at that time.