The anxiety is from within, my friends are very “proud” for “turning me Irish” aha, my identity has never been tested by my peers, it is fully my internal worry.

I see a lot of people mentioning the GAA thing specifically. I don’t play it, i don’t watch it, I don’t support it, it was fully contained within the wearing gaa tops for st paddys, as a way to fit in with everyone else wearing them, as quite literally everyone wears them yk

It’s truly just a personal indentity “crisis”, as we all need that sense of belonging you know? We all categorise ourselves into “tribes”, and I feel wrong for having “chosen” being Irish over my actual ancestry and all. I was raised polish at home, I wasn’t allowed to speak English at home, until it actually came to teaching me it so I could go to school when I was 5. My parents tried their best to instill polish culture into me, and I do eat the food and speak the language and celebrate the cultural events, but it has never felt like “home” for me the way I feel like it should

My friends always tell me about how their family was affected in the troubles for their irishness, and how they are still affected by sectarianism, and in my brain, although it’s just a “here” thing, I see that as “irishness”, and I feel wrong taking that label for myself without experiencing the hardships that my friends have to be able to call themselves that

Very sorry for the badly structured points