Ireland is a hard place to live

[Mooshamoo]

Just watching the video of the black child being not given a medal by Irish gymnastics.

I was wondering if there is anyone else on here on craicnet, who is not Irish, living in Ireland. What your experiences are.

I think that Ireland can be a very hard place to live if you are not fully white and fully irish.

I'm half Irish. I was bullied all the way through school for not having an Irish surname. Then when I grew up and lived in the same small town, all of the same girls from my school were living in that town. And as adults they refused to talk to me.

I see the women who are fully Irish, being popular , having great lives.

To be totally acceptable and popular in ireland, you have to have a rich family, brothers/father who play gaa etc.

All the rich girls in my school hung around together. And again as adults all the rich Irish women hung around together in small town Ireland.

If you were foreign, from a single parent family, seen as poor, you were not accepted at all.

And it's who you know

I think this makes Ireland a very difficult place to live

I have been honest and did not mean to offend anyone so i apologise for doing so. What i was trying to express (perhaps very clumsily) was that I see race. Growing up, the country was almost 100% white, so I do notice (rightly or wrongly) people who aren't white. I don't have any preconceptions about people who are not white, but it does register in my brain. That is all.

There has been tons of constructive advice delivered kindly, you just don't want to hear it.

@wfhconfusion
I stated I have seen on this thread at least one Irish person who sounds like a bully. That is true. I did not call all PPs bullies. I'm not saying anyone who disagrees is a bully. I have disagreed in some regards and made my own points respectfully. But the behaviour of at least one person on this thread has been bully like.

I have replied and said thanks to many of the people who talked to me kindly on this thread. Actually. You can scroll back and look

Thank you very much for that. I hope that you have a really beautiful day.

@BooAutumniscoming thank you very much for that. I hope that you have a really beautiful day.

@Chickenkeev I understand where you're coming from. On my return visits from London in the 80s and 90s I was always struck by how white we all were. I'd be visiting my nan who lived about 7 miles from Dublin and even there you could go snowblind looking at people. Compared to Hackney where I then lived , especially.

A few years ago I read an article by an African writer reminiscing about his days at Trinity. Back then he said , if you approached a Garda with some query he or she would invariably reply - ' Yes doctor '. Because the only black people in Dublin then were studying in the College of Surgeons. He felt a like a fraud as he was doing Literature iirc . But he enjoyed the distinction!

Understandably, this thread has got very emotive and I get that. When we hear something we don’t like about a place we were born in, brought up in, and live in it can be hard to hear. BUT, we do need to listen to these stories and take them on board and empathise with those that haven’t had such a great experience and learn from those. We should not be telling people who have had a hard time that they are autistic (what a weird and insulting response) or if they don’t like it just “effing leave”. Also the few references to the OP’s situation with her mother I think are just darn right cruel and not needed. Come on, we are better than this surely.

I am a very proud Irish person, love the country and people I grew up with and lived with for many years. But I can also see how people haven’t had the same experience as I have had and can see and have seen first hand and heard first hand from those who haven’t been treated so well. But I won’t dismiss those experiences because that just lets those experiences continue - the brushing under the carpet and gas lighting only means history keeps repeating itself. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the best part of two decades living in different countries and coming back as a different person than the one that left has allowed me to see the wood for the trees in some respect and has allowed me the compassion to understand that some find it hard here. My experience here definitely brought home some real life truths to my family living here.

our pride in our country is admirable and I think allows us to have such a strong cultural identity. But it shouldn’t stand in the way of us acknowledging that we don’t get things right all the time and that people can have hard times here. We can be both proud and accepting of our faults. And work to change those.

That all being said , I’m still proud of who I am and where I come from because even though Ireland has it’s issues it’s still full of good people who will look sympathetically on those less fortunate and who have had a rough time and will work to help those in need. That goes for any country to be honest.

OP - I can only reiterate what I’ve said before and that is I am sorry for what you’ve been through and are going through. You seem to have ran into a bad bunch of apples who I hope you break away from soon. You’re still young, have your life ahead of you so lots can change and hopefully for the best.

I don't think anyone is claiming that Ireland is perfect or that there aren't issues, but OP is entirely blaming Ireland and Irish people for her problems in life.

Some of the assumptions she makes in her opening post are downright ridiculous, e.g. about being rich, part of the GAA, having an Irish surname. As I said, I'm half English with a very English name, far from rich, not into GAA at all, and I haven't had any problems.

I'm interested to hear your experiences too. Are you in small town or big city Ireland?

I think the thing is you haven't been open to hearing postive experiences. When I shared mine I got but did you move here as a child? You are always looking for something that differentiates other peoples experiences from yours and looking for ways that they can't possibly understand how you feel.

I grew up very, extremely, probably as rural as you can get, so rural that it would be outing if I gave much detail. I moved here in the very early 90s as kid. I had a great experience in my small primary school, the other kids thought my english accent was an exotic novelty and wanted to be my friend, wanted to come to our home because it was different. Not in a bad way, not in a way I felt othered and I was never picked on they were just kind of fascinated with it? I was fascinated with Ireland too, before then I lived in an extremely diverse UK city and rural Ireland was a culture shock and a half, again not in a bad way but it was so different. I had a great time in primary school though. Again in secondary, it was fine, I had friends, was never bullied, my Englishness was never an issue. I've always had my English accent, I get a lot of where are you from questions, when I tell people I get a really positive response, lots of 'oh I love that area or I would love to go there'. I live in small town Ireland now and again it's just not an issue, do I get slagged sometimes? Yeah but sure everyone gets slagged for something. My dds friend was over the other day and dd has an english twang thanks to me and she said butter or something like that and her friend slagged the way she said it and she just turned around and slagged him right back. Her friends have started using some of her English expressions sometimes. Being English is part of who we are and we aren't ashamed of it and we aren't made to feel ashamed of it.

I don't know but I just really cannot emphasise how little an effect being English has had on my life here. When someone says where are you from, I never feel defensive, never feel like it's going to go a bad way because it just never does. Like I said I have lived rurally, lived in a city and lived in small towns and it has just never been an issue, I don't feel at all defensive of it or anything.

Tbh the biggest issue is probably from my English relatives who seem to assume that we are some kind of backward yokels who wouldn't understand their sophistated British ways. Something that always stands out is a relative trying to explain to me what a dishwasher was because obviously we wash our dishes in the bog

I grew up in a small town.

@JustAMum2003
To be fair, I think the person who mentioned the possibility of autism was doing so in an effort to be helpful. Autism in girls presents differently and it wouldn't have been something anyone would have looked for when OP was growing up.

I have no experience of asd in girls or women but do have a DS with it. Sometimes on threads about children it is very obvious from the description of behaviours what the problem may be. Suggesting it as a possibility in an effort to be helpful is not diagnosing. People may not want to know initially, but is the alternative - letting someone go on struggling without having any idea why - really the better option?

I really don't know whether the suggestion was in any way relevant to @Mooshamoo. As I said I've no experience in how it presents in women.
However, I do think counselling at least may help her start to untangle her past traumas. Wishing you peace and happiness in the future OP.

Indeed @Cloudandpies

It was clear that person was trying to be helpful.

Also for anyone to say it's an insult is quite unpleasant, as if being autistic is something to be ashamed of.

Youre totally missing the point as usual. No one said that being autistic is a bad thing.

What is a bad thing, is strangers thinking they can diagnose people over the internet. When only a qualified medical professional can diagnose autism . Its insulting and bizarre that anyone would do that .

What if I said to you Sakura7 you're autistic. Ive decided that.

What would you think

It was considered an insult by one person at least:

We should not be telling people who have had a hard time that they are autistic (what a weird and insulting response)

And she didn't diagnose you, she was very careful to say that. She said she had been diagnosed herself and she saw some similarities with you, and that it might be worth exploring. Because treatment helped her enormously, and if you did happen to be in a similar situation it would help you enormously too.

It was a suggestion from a good place. It may or may not be relevant but she wasn't attacking you or insulting you by saying that.

I've seen many of the OPs posts. Hopefully she gets some help and support, she clearly needs it.

These posts remind me of the ones that you see a lot about England (or UK in general) where people can jump in and say how bad things are. The reality is that huge numbers of people, from all over the world are looking to move to the UK for a better life. It's not easy for most people, but it's better than alternatives for so so many.

I originally from Northern Ireland, and mostly enjoyed living there. Notable negatives were limited job opportunities for me, not so great schools for tech/science, and sectarianism (depending on where you lived) ... but overwhelming positive. Lived for 14 years in south Dublin/Wicklow, and really liked that too, my DH is English (his mother is from Singapore). Back in England again now for a few more years. It's a discussion we've often had about retirement, where would be go? Back to NI (DH does not like it), or Wicklow (no family there) or stay here in England (close to DH family)?

Personally I feel lucky to have grown up in this part of the world

OT but Wicklow so expensive 😬

@Chickenkeev yes it certainly is. Both DH and I work in tech area, and moved for work in Dublin after a few years in the US, and we found it expensive. Through my DF's illness I worked remotely from back home in the north east, and the costs of housing/accomdation especially seem totally out of in Dublin. Rep of Ireland is very expensive.

For completeness, I was bullied when I went to boarding school in England for being from "Ireland". It was also clear to me, after a few terms, that I was also probably one of the poorest even thought our family would have been considered what have described my craicnet posters as "well off". But being very good at sports, excellent academically and being "tough" it didn't really impact me at the time even, I simply didn't care.

@Sakura7 I’m sorry you misinterpreted my post. Just to be clear, I thought it was insensitive to the OP, but in fact more so to people with ASD. Not all people with ASD have cognitive or behavioural rigidity or fixation. And not all people who have traumatic experiences they want to be heard (and not dismissed) and are struggling to cope with the trauma it’s causing, are ASD.

I’m sure the poster was suggesting ASD in good faith and I can see now how my comments might have been misinterpreted and not have landed well, so apologies for that.

I haven't RTFT but seeing the news about the gymnastic medal yest & there was no mention of it being a participation medal & that the medal giver thought the participation medals were only for non winners. I can easily see how that would have happened.

I grew up in a small Bible Belt town in the North & live back here again now & for the last 12 years after 15 years in a big city in England. I love this land with all my heart & mostly the people are great. Like everywhere though, folk are mixed. There's definitely a proportion of bigots in this town who are xenophobic-particularly since a section of the town has seen a large settlement of Eastern European people, a lot of who don't seem to want to integrate with the local community, (although many do). You will easily see any comments on the Belfast telegraph where people will bicker about anything. In recent days, a farmer spreading slurry while a GAA match was on has attracted a fair amount of criticism 🥴

I got what you meant
I think maybe as a white person for years we thought we shouldn't "see" colour but over the last number of years, probably as more PoC voices are being heard, its becoming clear that to not see colour is in actuality, denying their experiences?
So we need to rethink that approach

Thanks. It's an interesting question though isn't it, like we shouldn't see POC as different (rightly so) while at the same time seeing POC in their own right and recognising their unique experiences. I'm always learning like, but it can be difficult.

Yeah exactly. No one (decent) wants to be ignorant or discriminatory. I try to listen to POC voices when I can, read their stories and experiences and hope that I'm passing on to my dc an awareness of the challenges that some people face.

I love reading about Rhasidat Adeleke the runner when I see articles about her. A name that honours one side of her heritage and an accent that matches the other. She's a 21st century Irish woman and I love to see her doing well.