Just like clockwork, the sun has appeared just before the schools re-open for a brand new term.
If there’s one thing we can rely on in Ireland it’s a week of blistering sunshine as the secondary school students head back to the classroom.
I always feel nostalgic during this time of year. The shops are full of school supplies, the sense of a new chapter in the air, and the beginning of a new season just around the corner.
Living just a stone’s throw away from my old school also boosts that nostalgic feeling and recently I’ve been thinking of the advice I wish I could share with my teenage self just before she started secondary school.
Secondary school was a mixed bag for me. I attended an all-girls Catholic school in South Dublin so it definitely wasn’t without its faults or drama.
When I think back to the days of memorising lines from Macbeth, avoiding P.E class like the plague, and wearing my blue bottle coloured uniform, there’s one thing I wish I knew before it all began:
You’re not worthless because you’re from a working-class area.
I’ve lived in Drimnagh my entire life and there have been far too many occasions when people were far too quick to judge me simply because of my postcode.
We always got by and grew up in a happy, warm, and welcoming home, but once I started secondary school I started to notice the stark difference between classes in Ireland. There were some weeks when my parents didn’t have extra money for me to go out to the cinema with my friends or to buy that new H&M hoody everyone had.
I didn’t have a schoolbag from Lifestyle Sports and wore shoes from Penneys. Not everything was new or fancy or shiny, but it worked and that is what actually mattered. I know the ‘voluntary fee’ the school expects every parent to pay put a strain on my parents, who had three children in school and one wage coming in.
The world didn’t end because I didn’t have fancy Crayola pencils or enough money to go to Eddie Rockets after school every week, but I still felt embarrassed and not good enough.
I used to think families with more money had it all, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Some kids had lunch money every day and others didn’t. Some wore second-hand jumpers or borrowed books from their older sisters. The pressure to have it all, even in your early teens weighed down on a lot of students, and I just wish we knew what we had didn’t define us.
Money may make life easier, but it doesn’t make you a better or more valuable person. It’s something I wish I realised sooner. I wish I wasn’t embarrassed about where I came from or how ‘little’ I had compared to others. Did I still have a happy childhood despite it all? Of course, I did.
It was full of wonderful holidays to Cork, Donegal, and Wales. We danced around the sitting room on Saturday nights to S Club 7 with our cheap disco ball shining. We had picnics in my Dad’s Nissan when the rain poured on trips to the local park.
Our birthdays were always celebrated and the table was covered in rice crispy cakes and packets of smarties. Dinner was always waiting for us when we got home from school and we never went to bed hungry. Sure we didn’t go on fancy holidays abroad and sometimes we’d have slightly tattered school shoes, but we were happy and I wish that’s what I focused on when I was a teenager.
But like any teen, I was worried about the things I didn’t have, that sense of not being ‘cool’ enough or not having the fanciest mobile phone. I worried about my clothes, about missing out on days out because I had no pocket money left, and fretted about whether my house was as nice as my friend’s who had the flat-screen TV and double extension.
If only I could go back in time and show my teenage self just how lucky she was. How lucky she was to live in a house with her family so close to her. How lucky she was to come from an area where the people are full of character and who always look out for one another. How lucky she was to live somewhere where people worked and grafted like there was no tomorrow.
To live somewhere where people looked out for one another. Somewhere where people knew what it was like to struggle but kept going anyway. Somewhere where people held their heads up high no matter what life threw at them. Somewhere where people didn’t have a lot, but it was always enough.
How lucky she was to live just down the road from her grandparents. To have such a hard-working Dad and such a caring Mam, who gave up so much to raise her three daughters.
Being working-class is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s something to be proud of.
I just wish I knew that back then, but at least I know it now.
