Like the Moon Rising

A personal choice taken within a specific sociopolitical context, now needs reevaluation, as the political framework shifts under the shadow of Brexit. I recall a life-changing decision made young, to move from Dublin to London for university and consequently to stay in the United Kingdom. I look back on my early experiences in London, on a sense of immersion within collectively shared European history, particularly the long shadow cast by the trauma of war. I examine my national and European identities, and how I grew to inhabit a hybrid, non-binary notion of national identity. I question my position and the effect a challenge to polarise identity has upon me and consider the value of maintaining presence as a complex, embodied self who holds a pluralistic notion of national identity as a strategy of resistance against discourses that seek to deny the existence of such subjectivities.