I Woke Up In Scotland…
Papers, please!
--
I’ve woken up to many things. A few times, during my out-of-control drinking days I woke up in the front gardens of strangers. I’ve woken up in houses of people I had no idea who they were, on trains that had reached their final destination and in random parts of the countryside.
I can’t ever remember enjoying waking up in any of those situations. Usually, I think, I was just grateful I was still breathing.
However, until a couple of weeks ago, I’d never woken up as a Scotsman. Well, that’s technically incorrect as it turns out I’ve been waking up every day as someone of Scottish descent. It’s stretching credibility for me to claim to be Scottish. Descent is one thing, being indigenous is altogether something else. This is a very strange thing to discover. How did it happen?
I’ve visited Scotland on numerous occasions. There are lots of golf courses and whisky distilleries. There is also more beautiful countryside and coastline than one person can ever take in. Hand on heart I can’t claim to have been drawn to the place, but looking back I’ve visited as many times as I’ve been anywhere else in the world.
I’ve never lived there and wasn’t born there. I’ve been searching for a while for my real family. As a product of forced adoption, much was done to keep me from accessing my blood relatives.
This included concealing from me that my adoptive parents were in contact with my birth mother, including the fact that she’d visited my home during my childhood.
Generally, my fake mother portrayed my mum as a wrongun’. That’s an English phrase for a person of bad character. My dad was even worse as he apparently fathered me, absconded and denied any responsibility.
The few pieces of information I managed to glean about my father were that he was in the armed forces, where he was stationed around the time of my birth and his nationality. He was Scottish.
Having now exposed my adoptive mother as a rabid narcissist and a liar, I have very little resource in terms of proving or disproving any of the scant information that she’s shared over the years.
Nationality has always been a strange concept to me. You never hear an archaeologist, having unearthed some Mesozoic treasure, declaring that said fossilised lifeform was Belgian. The traits of human beings such as skin colour have evolved from adaption to climate conditions.
Yet as time has passed we have divided ourselves up into groups and confined ourselves within lines drawn on a map. Then we spend our time falling out with people who live on the other side of that line as well as amongst ourselves.
We wear coloured uniforms and wave flags. Occasionally we cross over the lines and claim some more land for ourselves. For some countries, this has become a national pass time. Yes England, I’m looking at you.
Of course, many of us are not originally from where we live now. While you’re shagging away at that pristine flag of St. George you may want to consider if you have any origins amongst the Normans, Saxons or Angles…
For most of my life, I’ve been defined as English. While investigating my family tree I took a DNA test. This was mostly based on the claim that my father was Scottish. I felt this would be a form of confirmation.
I have typically Celtic looks. Pale skin, blue eyes, not good in direct sunlight and hair that was so ginger that as a child I was probably visible from space. I’ve never really got on board with the whole English patriotism thing. Mainly because it seems to mainly manifest itself as being a bit racist.
So the DNA test reveals I’m more than half Scottish. One night a couple of weeks ago, I went to bed of English descent and in the morning I woke up of Scottish descent. As yet, I’m not sure how I feel about this or if it’s important.
Having never really subscribed to the concept of nationalities, it’s odd to now start to feel some sense of identity. It never bothered me that I was English., I never went out of my way to make it any kind of advantage or disadvantage.
My passport says I’m a British Citizen. There is no such thing at this time as a Scottish passport. Scotland to all intents and purposes is owned by England. An ironic situation given the recent Brexit event (warning the link leads to content with language some may find offensive) where a country voted to be completely independent but then can’t actually face being independent.
Nationalism aside, the discovery of my origins has moved me from a large and diverse ethnic group to a much smaller one. Scots originate from mostly Picts and Gaels that lived in the northern British Isles in the ninth century BC.
This has imbued me with a sense of identity. Maybe I could sense somewhere deep down that while geography and language conveyed a nationality, I never really felt ethnically English. I’m not even sure what that term means, the ‘English’ are from all over the place. Quite often that place is what is now Germany which is ironic given subsequent events.
Now I’m of Scottish descent, never having lived there and lacking the accent or any of the traditions. I am not suddenly overcome with the desire to wear a kilt, become addicted to heroin or start quoting obscure Burnsian verse. I live about as far from Scotland as you can get in the British Isles.
Somehow, however, I now feel a sense of belonging. I feel part of a group of people who possess an identity and pride in who they are. The English seem mainly consumed with self-loathing and I’m more than happy to join in that loathing from the other side of the line.
From a parentage perspective, this gives me a further degree of separation from my adoptive family. Even though I have little to no chance of ever tracing my father, I at least know I carry his bloodline forward. The behaviour of my adoptive mother has long since meant I want nothing to do with her family.
His military service at least presents a chance to identify him and it would mean I would have an authentic family name. One which, if correct, would give me a long Scottish heritage.
It’s a very difficult question to answer. Am I embracing my newfound Scottishness because I feel it gives me a strong sense of identity, or because I can shed the English identity I was given, but never embraced because I quite frankly despise some of its generic traits?
I’m warmed by the sense that there may be people out there I can call kin by blood. I’ve spent most of my life feeling completely alone, never helped by the solitary upbringing I was presented with nor by the constant gaslighting by my fake mother
At this point ma heid’s mince, but I mean to gie it laldy and embrace my (now proven) Celtic origins.
For more Doom Hustling from the Land of Sobriety, you can join my list.
I write about alcohol and society based on my experiences as a former alcoholic now embracing sobriety (see that kinda rhymes). You can read more of my stories and thousands of others by subscribing to Medium for just $5 per month, cancel any time. Thanks for reading!
