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More About Our Guest
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www.forbairtfeirste.com
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Episode Transcript:
Welcome to Episode FOOOOUR hundred, with my guest, Jake MacSiacais. Wow, 400 episodes! I cannot believe that. Eight years later, 400 episodes, and I didn’t plan for this to fall on the 400th episode, but this is, I think, maybe the most—for me—the most exciting episode to share with you guys because it’s a subject matter that is near and dear to me, and Jake’s story is compelling and I also think it’s a, uh, it’s a story that is historically relevant and important, um, and I think it’s … I’m just so excited now. I, I hope you like—if you don’t like this episode, don’t email me. You will crush my spirits. My name is Paul Gilmartin. This is the Mental Illness Happy Hour: a place for honesty about all the battles in our heads—from medically diagnosed conditions; past traumas, sexual dysfunctions; to everyday, compulsive negative thinking. The show's not meant to be a substitute for professional mental counseling. I'm not a therapist; it's not a doctor's office—it's more like a waiting room that doesn't suck. Got to mentalpod.com; that’s the web site for this show. And we need you guys to take more surveys, especially the happy moments and the awfulsome moments surveys. Those are kind of the, the moments of light, uh, that break up the darkness and the, uh, and the darker surveys. And, um, you guys have slowed down in, in filling those out. So, if you could, if you have any happy moments—and they don’t have to be big—that, that would, uh, be greatly appreciated. Also, um, subscribe to the podcast, uh, through iTunes. That would be our (unintelligible)—it’s called Apple Podcasts now—and you can get, uh, I guess a year or … at least a year of episodes, uh, free. And then, I think starting episodes that are before 2017 are only available at Stitcher Premium, and that’s just, uh, $4.99 a month. And then you get access to a HUUUUUGE amount of other podcasts, back catalogs. And our back catalog goes all the way to March of our first episode, in March of 2011. So, hundreds, hundreds of eps in the back—did I just say eps (chuckles)—in the back catalog with some great guests. Tiffany Haddish, Maria Bamford, Marc Maron, Janet Varney, Paul F. Tompkins, uh, Dr. Ellen Sax (sp.), uh, NHL legend Theo Fleury, uh. Just … too many to even, even BEGIN to try to, uh, remember. So, if you do sign up for Stitcher Premium, be sure to, uh, um, do it through our link or when they ask you what podcast you’re signing up from, um, say the Mental Illness Happy Hour. We have links to all this shit and ways to help the podcast on, uh, on our web site. I was, I would, just came from my support group meeting about a half hour ago. And, we were talking about compartmentalizing things. And, uh, it’s funny how this plays out too, because as you hear Jake’s story, um, he, towards the end of his interview shares how it came to a head, his years of compartmentalizing the horrors of, um, being in “The Troubles,” both on the receiving end of the violence and oppression, and on the, uh, end of, um, uh, you know … attempting to kill British soldiers. And, I was thinking about … how, it’s interesting, sometimes, how we don’t realize that something we buried is painful, because when we compartmentalize it, it takes on a dulled, uncomfortable quality that doesn’t feel like pain. And I think that’s why we compartmentalize it, you know, why our brain does that: is so that we can keep functioning. But, there’s also the danger that because it’s just kind of a dull, restless, empty feeling, we never give credence to the fact that we might be bearing something that was actually traumatic. And so, for many of us, we go decades without … even thinking to mention these things or bring them up, because they don’t feel like a, you know, a fire burning inside of us. So we think it’s something else. We think our life is just unsatisfactory or we’re a piece of shit or, you know, the future is just doom and gloom for us. But, in my experience, those can be the repercussions of compartmentalizing ourselves and then finding things to distract and numb us: acting out sexually, drinking, shooting drugs, um, being a workaholic, being a love addict. All of those things distract us. So it’s, the, like, the compartmentalizing and then the distracting are the two things that we really need to face, I think, to be able to clean out all the shit that backs up inside us emotionally as we … get knocked around in life. But once we feel that pain … and that, and that trauma is processed, it’s so freeing to be on the other side of it because then it’s easier to be present and to connect more deeply to people. And, uh, I just wanted to share those, those thoughts with you. So, I hope you enjoy this, this, uh episode with, with Jake, um, who is a former IRA soldier/volunteer, um, whatever term you want to use for it.
[00:06:56] And, uh, I wanna lead into that with an awfulsome moment filled out by a guy who calls himself “Gashly Crumb Tiny.” And he writes: “My alcoholic mother and stepfather abused me physically and verbally throughout my childhood. One of my earliest memories—age 3 or 4—was of my mother screaming at me on Christmas morning about how horrible I was because I had woken up early and opened some presents. Christmas is still really hard these days; it got worse after that. They unpredictably lost their tempers and battered me. In between, there were frequent threats to kill or abandon me. Anything could trigger their rage. About 20 years ago, I wrote to my mother, asking for an apology and a … (stumbles on words) and a promise that she would never again harm another child. I had concerns that she might hit my sister’s kids. I warned her that if she didn’t make her promise, she would never hear from me again. She replied, but there was no apology or promise. Instead, I got excuses and sly digs. Just recently, I found out that my mother has a web site offering holistic counseling.”
Intro
[00:09:11] Paul: I’m here with Jake MacSiacais, who is a former IRA soldier—is that wa, is that the, uh terminology?
Jake: We’re just called the IRA Volunteers
Paul: IRA Volunteer. We’re here in, uh, Belfast, and, uh, thank you for taking time out of your, your schedule to, uh, to come, uh, share some of your story with us. And, and many thanks to Michael, who, uh, hooked us up. I appreciate it. One of the reasons I’m excited to, to talk to you, uh, about is, is, you know, the history of the oppression of, not only Irish culture, um, and Irish rights, but also, uh, the Irish language and the time in the, in the 1970s, uh, when “The Troubles”—well, I suppose late 60s—when "The Troubles" began, you were a kid, you were …
Jake: Yeah, I was, um … well "The Troubles" de facto began in 1966. But, there had been, from about mid 60s—I was only born in 1958—and … I can distinctly remember, in the run-in to what they call “The Troubles,” there had been UVF killings that killed Nationalists—
Paul: And, and UVF, stand for, Ulster Volunteer Force—
Jake: The Ulster Volunteer Force. There were a Protestant, uh, paramilitary militia, um, who … Nationalist backed, were funded and assisted by the RUC, and all that—
Paul: And RUC being the Royal Ulster Constable (stumbles on words) (chuckles)—
Jake: Constabulary (Paul and Jake laugh). The Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Paul: So, uh, the, the RUC were the official local police.
Jake: They were the official local police.
Paul: And the UVF were kind of the Protestant version of the, uh IRA?
Jake: Yep, basically. Yep. They were—the UVF were (clears throat), um, (unintelligible) phases when they northern (unintelligible) were set-up—the UVF were involved in the slaughter of, um, over 600 Catholics in the city. And, so that was the first, um … heavy oppression, through Nationalists who were trapped on the wrong side of the border.
Paul: And what time would that have been?
Jake: 1921, after the Anglo-Irish Treaty. And the granting of independence, the 26th of Ireland’s 32 counties, they created a thing which is called Northern Ireland. And most Unionists refer to it as Ulster, but it’s not Ulster. Ulster has nine counties, and Northern Ireland has six. And the reason they only took six was because the six counties would guarantee an in-built Protestant majority in perpetuity. So, that’s, that’s why that region was chosen.
Paul: Gerry-, gerrymandering.
Jake: It was gerrymandering, um, on a huge scale. And, um, we’re actually at the end—and the end came of that night because demographics has changed, and nationalism was almost on par with unionism within the northern state.
Paul: Meaning that the Catholic population has caught up to the Protestant—
Jake: Not just caught up, um. The Catholic birthrate is twice the Protestant birthrate. And the Protestant death rate is twice the Catholic death rate. So, they’re accelerating downwards and we’re accelerating upwards.
Paul: Why is the Protestant, uh, death rate, uh …
Jake: They're a much older, um—
Paul: Oh!
Jake: —population profile; much older. So, they're gradually, um, dying off. Most Protestants who have the opportunity, usually leave the north of Ireland and go abroad. The young people, people who want opportunity, they go abroad. Because this place is stifling, and it’s, um … standing on the integrity of a very old argument (chuckles). (Stumbles on words)—
Paul: Who’s land is it?
Jake: Yeah, and, and, that’s the heart, I mean, that’s the heart of the conflict. The heart of this conflict really is, if you look at the plantation of Ulster in the, uh, 1600s, the problem with the plantation was it wasn’t successful enough. So they didn’t kill enough natives to subdue them. So there was all these (A) resentful native minority left and, um … also, the Protestant Unionist community constantly lived in the seed’s mentality. “These people are gonna come back (unintelligible) what’s theirs.” So it was just mutual distrust and loathing—
Paul: They're gonna treat us like we treated them.
Jake: That’s, that’s exactly what you had. And (takes a drink), the 1960s … really what had happened was free education was the key to changing this place. A Labor government after the Sagamore War brought on free education and that affected everyone. So the first generation of Catholics who had been through third-level education on merit and not on money were beginning to emerge in the universities. And they were beginning to ask very fundamental questions: “Why is it right that an employer can stamp a card, saying ‘Reason for refusal of employment: Catholic?’ (chuckles) So—
Paul: That, that was legal.
Jake: That was legal. And there were only two grounds. One, um, you would be refused benefits if you didn’t have a legitimate reason for not getting a job, and one of the grounds was Catholic. So you could go to the social security and says ‘I didn’t get a job cuz I was Catholic.’ (chuckles)
Paul: And, and, previous generations had just tolerated that because they didn’t know how to organize?
Jake: Well, they were too small.
Paul: I see.
Jake: They … I mean. Saying that the IRA campaigned in the 30s, in the 40s, in the 50s. The IRA had fought campaigns in every generation, uh, since the inception of the state. And, by 1965/6, there was a sea change, that what you had now was the beginnings of a Nationalist expansion. The beginnings of a Nationalist, educated class, and that class was beginning to ask fundamental questions of the state. And the very fundamentalist wing of unionism, which believes all manner of madness from, their the lost tribe of Israel, to, um, Catholics are all condemned to hell and they're all god’s children. So you’ve all of that in there, and also—on a very base level, anyone who wants to hold on to something sees those who are demanding change as a threat. So, in the late 1960s civil march, civil rights marches started. They were heavily influenced by what was happening in America and the Black civil rights movement. Right down to the fact that we sang the same songs on the marches. I remember as child singing We Shall Overcome, and being really in admiration of the Black Panthers and what they were doing in America and saying, I mean … “Why can’t we do that here?” And, by 1968, I remember … for me, that was really the first moment I understood in absolute terms, that there was a “them” and an “us.” And it happened quite banally. We were going to visit—my mother left school when she was 14, like most women. She went as a half-timer in the mill. And the woman—
Paul: Li, li linen mill?
Jake: Linen mills, yeah. (Clears throat) The woman she started working with is called Sissy Wat (sp.). And Sissy Wat (sp.)—we would have visited Sissy (sp.) at Christmas, we would have visited her at Easter. And I think this was Easter, maybe have been a little bit later in the year—I can’t be sure; I was 10. But, myself, my mother, Pauline and Carol—my two sisters—went to visit Sissy (sp.). And there had been a a riot in (unintelligible) and a riot in (unintelligible) around the civil rights march.
Paul: Uh, a raid?
Jake: A RIOT.
Paul: Oh, a riot, ok.
Jake: A riot. People, uh, rioted. And when we reached Sissy’s (sp.) door, she pulled the door open, held it with her foot, and said, “Roseline (sp.), you're not welcomed anymore,” and slammed the door. These are people who had worked together for, for years. And, I remember not understanding it, and … but I also remember it was the first moment that I realized my parents weren’t omnipotent. My mother was afraid. I didn’t know what she was afraid of, but I knew she was afraid. And her fear was being passed onto us. And I was going … and she said, “Shut up, shut up! Just get home. Go! Move, move! Get home. Don’t be (unintelligible).” She brought us home to, um, our (Irish word for grandfather), my grandfather’s house, and we were … I remember my mother getting into the kitchen and my grandfather saying, ‘I told you they were not your friends. I told you they would turn on you.’ So, the next time—
Paul: And were they Protestant?
Jake: They were Protestant, yes. And, when I met, um, a lad who was Sissy’s (sp.) son, Jim Wat (sp.), he, um … I knew—I mean he was a few years older than men, but I knew him when I was a child. And, um, the next time I met him was, was in Crumlin Road Jail. And he was part of a UVF gang that were in, for among other things, killing my cousin.—
Paul: Wow.
Jake: And, uh, he was also, um, convicted of bombing a Republican funeral, bombing a Republican march, and I think—
Paul: Was that the Bloody Friday one, or a different—
Jake: No, no, this was a, a funeral he bombed. He bombed the Easter parade in 1977 in (unintelligible) and killed a, a lad of about 10-year-old. So, looking back, it was clear they were a UVF family, and that the minute Catholics began demanding rights we were no longer welcome. And … my, my father’s generation were really the last generation that kept their heads down. My generation—
Paul: Kept their heads down.
Jake: Kept their heads down. He—there’s a saying in Ireland, um, uh: “He stooped over far, his head’s as low as a Larne Catholic. Larne is a really Loyalist area, and if your head was as low as a Larne Catholic’s, it meant you were almost on the ground. So, you learn all these things, they were saying, “Keep your head down; don’t rock the boat (Paul: Yes). Be careful. Watch what you say.”
Paul: And just to clarify for our American listeners, Loyalists means people who are, uh, generally Protest and are fine with, uh, being under British rule, and Republican or Nationalists are—
Jake: Are people who want the reunification of Ireland—
Paul: Of Ireland, and tend to be Catholic.
Jake: And tend to be Catholic, yeah. Cul-, well, culturally, Catholic … although, again it’s not, it’s not absolute. I knew Protestant IRA men. (chuckles) So, it’s, it’s not—
Paul: Really?
Jake: Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, there were a number in prison with us. One was arrested along with my sister, um, on a, uh, an IRA operation to assassinate a police chief. He was proud (unintelligible); his father was in the Orange Order, but he was in the IRA.—
Paul: He must have really hated his father.
Jake: (Laughs) I think that what happened was that, um … I mean the ones that I know were all Protestants who lived in Nationalist areas. So their lived experience was of oppression from the state—
Paul: Yes.
Jake: —even though they were born Protestant.
Paul: I see.
Jake: Their experience was pretty much what our experience was. So, they, um—
Paul: They got to experience something other than the stereotype—
Jake: The stereotypes.
Paul:—that different sides of the wall feed each other.
Jake: Feed each other.
Paul: What were some of the stereotypes that, that you had of Protestants that you don’t longer hold?
Jake: Well, um, when we were growing up, for example, the Belfast city (unintelligible), we’d run past it cuz we were afraid that it was unholy. And it turns out they're Catholics, Protestant Jews and dissenters. But we were always told it was a Protestant cemetery. And, so we would cross the road to avoid going past it cuz it was, it was evil. I, I don’t, I’ve no recollection of anyone actually telling me that. But I do know that I firmly believed it, that you had to cross the road in case …
Paul: Is that the cemetery where there’s a … an underground wall separate, separating—
Jake: Separates the Catholics and Protestants.
Paul: Yes. Just in case they wanna dig—
Jake: That’s a—
Paul: You never know; they're sneaky!
Jake: Well, the thing I was worried about there was you would get Catholic worms and Protestant worms breeding (both chuckle). You don’t want them to reproduce—
Paul: Then you’ve got chaos.
Jake: (Chuckles) Absolute chaos.
Paul: Yes.
Jake: A lot of people doubted the veracity of that story until, um, the city council, Tom Hartley, who, uh, has done a history of the cemetery, he got them to open it and there it was: three foot wide, nine deep, a red brick wall. (Paul chuckles; Jake laughs)
Jake: No sex, please. We’re different denominations! (Both laugh.)
Paul: So, let’s, let—
Jake: But another stereotype, (stumbles on words) they were dangerous—
Paul: Um hmm…
Jake: They were a total threat to us, um, if you, if they caught you. You’d be beaten. And, um … for example—
Paul: Was this as a child, or as an adult?
Jake: Oh, as a child!
Paul: Ok. Cuz as an adult, that was true. (chuckles)
Jake: Oh, absolutely. But it was also true as a child. I mean, there were very … few periods when, especially around July, Catholics would say, “(unintelligible) their blood’s up.”
Paul: Because of the July 12th—
Jake: July 12th.
Paul: —Orange celebration?
Jake: People who would talk to other people all year round would suddenly not talk. And, um … I remember, very young—I was living at my grammy’s, I must have been five—and I was given an half-penny, which would have bought you a thing called a Lucky Man, which was a sugary teeth destroyer (Paul chuckles), which had another half-penny hidden in every so many, so you’d get … so it was called a Lucky Man. But you eat these things—so I went to the shop on the Lance Avenue and tap on the counter as children do. And the man started abusing me, and “Take yourself off to where you come from!” I had … absolutely no idea what it was about. And I went back to my grammy’s and she says, ‘Well, you shouldn’t’ve gone to that shop. Go to the shop at top of Brantham (sp.) Park; his blood’s up over the Twelfth.”
Paul: Wow.
Jake: He was a Protestant. I was five. Couldn’t have been any more than five.
Paul: It’s interesting, too, why there blood would be up over remembering a war they WON.
Jake: Yeah, well … I think that the blood’s up because they, um … they … not only are celebrating the fact that they won a battle, which is another story entirely because it’s a … a battle that had very little to do with Ireland—but, um, they celebrate the Twelfth. But, also, it was a time for reinforcing “Croppies, lie down.” That was a “Croppies, lie down.”
Paul: And what is, what does that mean?
Jake: In the 1798 rebellion, the Irish soldiers cropped their hair, along with (unintelligible) to sustain the haircut after the French Revolution. And they colored it, and the Protestant militia would shout, ‘Croppies, lie down.’ And they still … they still would shout that, even to this day. And, the other thing, they call us “Tigs (sp.);” that’s a pejorative term. And that comes from, apparently an obscure reference to the fable of the Ladder of St. Timothy.
Paul: Hmm.
Jake: And the fable—so with Timothy, an Irish Timothy is ‘Tadhg.’ That’s how it’s pronounced—
Paul: I see.
Jake: —So they had mispronounced the Irish word Tadhg as Tig (sp.).
Paul: And, and so, and that rebe—was that the one that Wolfe Tone?
Jake: Wolfe Tone was involved in the 1798 rebellion.—
Paul: And, and he was kind of the first historical Irish figure to say, you know … let’s gather arms and stop this shit.
Jake: Yeah. Um …
Paul: Catholics, at that time, could not hold land, and, uh—
Jake: Could not hold land. You could … you, um, if you were on a horse, um, you couldn’t hold a horse to the value of more than five pounds. So, a Protestant could buy your horse of you and insist you take five pound for it. You also, um, under the (unintelligible), or the penal laws, um, a Catholic priest could be handed over to the authorities to be hung. And, I think it was a three- or five-pound award for handing over a priest. So Catholic mass had to be said in valleys and glens and mountains. It was against the law to practice Catholic faith. Also, everybody had to pay tithes to the Protestant minister, even though (chuckles) nobody believed in it.
Paul: Yeah.
Jake: And, um … it was for that type of, um—there’s a great poem, um … was, was, it was penned anonymously, which kind of sums that up and it says: (poem spoken in Irish). Which means, um “Don’t speak of the alien minister, or of his religion without meaning or faith. The foundation stone of his temple is the bollox of Henry VIII.”
Paul: (chuckles) And, and explain to , uh, our listeners the importance of Henry VIII?
Jake: Well, Henry VIII was the English king who established the established church. And the reason that he established it was that he broke away from Rome cuz the Pope wouldn’t allow him to divorce. He wanted an heir, and he would stop at nothing. He’d beheaded two of his wives, and divorced others (chuckles).
Paul: And the Church of England—
Jake: And the Church of England, he became … he nominated himself head of the Church of England. And the current British queen is still head of the Church of England. And, and Ireland that’s called the Church of Ireland. (Both chuckle.)
Paul: So, now that we’ve set the table for the anger, what are the sparks then that ignite “The Troubles?”
Jake: Well, the … the, the real spark—and what is classed as the beginning of “"The Troubles,” starts in, um, January 1969. So throughout 1968, civil rights protest had been increasing and increasing. Civil rights march was battened off the streets in Derry, in a very bloody and violent fashion by the RUC. So there were lines of peaceful protesters beaten into the ground. Television had just arrived. Television was a rarity in Ireland until the late 60s. I would think the first television on our street was about 1965. So this thing was broadcasting around in, the world … what hap—what was happening. Before that, nobody know. And this was called “England’s Forgotten Backyard.” It’s over there, and leave them alone and let them sort it out. And—so, this violent burst onto the scene, the Unionist MP, um, the Unionist prime minister began what was called, um … Ulster at the Crossroads. So he makes a big speech; he says, “Please, no more, no more marching. We look at the aggravation, we look at the issues, we look at the complaints.” And the demands were very simple: one man, one vote. We weren’t even asking for vote for women. One man, one vote. The right to housing and the right to a job. And that, those were the three demands of the civil rights, and they were very—so there was no, united Ireland agenda. There was no bigger agenda than (unintelligible) rights within the northern state. But, the extreming of unionism tried to unseat the appeaser, as they seem him. And simultaneously, uh, people like the Reverend Ian Paisley, accompanied by Major Bunting (sp.) –they were two of the main figure. Bunting’s son—he ended being a member of the INLA, and was shot dead by Loyalists.—
Paul: He was a member of the what?
Jake: INLA: the Irish National Liberation Army. They were a Republican splinter group.
Paul: Oh, ok.
Jake: So, um, Ronnie Bunting, he was called. So, his father was the main leader of fundamentalist unionism. And he became one of the leaders of very radical left-wing Republicanism.
Paul: (chuckles) That’s an uncomfortable topic around the dinner table.
Jake: (chuckles) Around the dinner table.
Paul: How’s the son? (chuckles)
Jake: (unintelligible) He send his son—the son was one of the people that organized the march that I’m going to tell you about, which is Burntollet. So, the very safe middle-class nationalist said, “Ok, we’ll have no more marches. And let, let’s see—”
Paul: If they give us the vote.
Jake: “—if they give us the vote. Let’s, let’s calm things down.” Students said, “No. No, we’re marching.” So, they declared a march from Belfast to Derry, um. And, it turned out to be, um … I don’t know, if it was a mistake. It, it turned out to be a catastrophe, because the whole way from Belfast along, they were ambushed. Not just by Loyalists, but by policemen in uniform, who were beating them into the ground. And it reached the climax in a place called Burntollet … Burntollet Bridge, which is just on the outskirts of Derry. And when they reached Burntollet, there were thousands of Orangemen and policemen who literally just beat them all down into the river. And the ma-, the march had to be abandoned; they couldn’t march anymore because to get from Burntollet to Derry was through unionism. So they scattered, but then they ran so they began to arrive in the Derry, bloodied and battered and they were greeted by thousands. That August was the annual Apprentice Boys’ March in Derry. So they march on the 12th of August. That kicked off the Battle of the Bogside. The entire Bogside community just revolted against the state, and for a full week, there were running battles with petrol bombs, fighting the police. The police just kept sending in waves and waves to try and enter the Bogside. And, and Belfast people watching all of this were, were … “Oh, what’s happening?” And the night of 14th of August and the 15th of August, and Belfast Loyalists began the move in huge columns from the Shankill Road, down onto the Falls. Yeah, and they dissolved them with prams filled with petrol bombs, and they're just petrol-bombing houses as they come. And on those two nights, 10,000 Catholics were burned out of their homes … and ended up in Andersontown and safer areas. That was really the, that was “The Trouble.” Now, you haven’t seen that the IRA didn’t kill the first British soldier until 1971. So, there was a huge period in which the, the violence was, um, very sporadic The IRA (A) didn’t have the capacity—
Paul: Didn’t have weapons at that point.
Jake: Didn’t have weapons. For example, the night of the Falls Road was burned, um … the (unintelligible) the IRA were on the roof and the Loyalists were burning the streets towards them. And the IRA had, um, one, um, revolver: and old (unintelligible) Thompson machine gun and a carbine, and M1 carbine from Korea. That, that was the entire extent of their arsenal—
Paul: That’s like a cartoon.
Jake: (Chuckles) That’s a complete cartoon. And when the British … when, when the Loyalists were burning (unintelligible) armored driven by the RUC come down ahead of them. And when the IRA were firing the repellent, they opened fire with 3030 burning (sp.) machine guns. And, um, the first two casualties of “The Troubles,” as they're known occurred that night. And it was a young lad called Rooney, who was nine years old. And he was cut in half by a machine gun, lying on his bed—
Paul: Oh, yeah. And, and by the school, right?
Jake: Yep, yep.
Paul: I saw the bullet holes yesterday—
Jake: Bullet holes in the wall; huge. And the other one was a British soldier, a Catholic British soldier who was home on leave. He was shot. They were the two victims. The other one who was shot dead was, um, a member of the UVF, the Ulster Volunteer Corps. He was shot in Dovers—no, Percy Street. And he was called Herbert Roy. And he was shot by the IRA from the roof of that school.
Paul: For, for the listeners, sometimes if, if, um we’re mentioning, uh, Shankill Road or Falls Road, there, there’s a peace wall that, they run parallel and there’s a peace wall that runs between the two of them. And Shankill Road is the Protestant side of the peace wall, and Falls Road is the Catholic side of the, the peace wall. But the peace wall didn’t exist—
Jake: It didn’t exist—
Paul: —and when we’re talking—
Jake: No.
Paul: —about it. But, just so people can … visually kind of picture when we’re talking about Shankill or, or Falls Road.
Jake: Picture Shankill and Falls are two parallel roads, which are connected by long streets. So you’ve these long streets between these two main roads. And right through the center of it, once you get half way don those streets, they became Catholic. And when you went up, they were Protestant. So, from once side down, they burned them all out. They were just pushing the Catholics back.
Paul: All the way to Falls Road.
Jake: All the way to Falls Road. And, um, that becomes what, what becomes the (unintelligible), still there.
Paul: So, is there still just burned out houses there?
Jake: No, the—if you come on the Nationalist side, the chronic housing shortage and nationalism means that the houses are built right up to the peace wall. And you go on to the Protestant side, there no man’s land. So, at the start of “The Troubles,” the population of the Shankill was probably in and around 40-50,000. That’s now down to 10,000.
Paul: Say that, say that again. The … who’s houses were built right up to the peace wall.
Jake: Nigh, the Catholic houses are built right up against it.
Paul: Because there was a shortage of housing.
Jake: Cuz there is no housing. And the Catholic are (stumbles on words), you can’t get housed.
Paul: I see—because you … they couldn’t afford it or they weren’t, uh—
Jake: They won’t built, they won’t build social housing. They won’t build it, and even in areas like North Belfast, for example—with an expanding Catholic population—they built more peace walls in North Belfast after “"The Troubles” than were built during “The Troubles.” And the reason for that is Loyalists will not allow Catholics to, to occupy spare, spare land. They, they simply won’t allow it to be built. They, there’d be riots or confrontations. So, you have Catholic areas in Belfast, chronic housing shortage. And a demand for space and consequently higher rents. Whereas in Loyalist areas, you’ve huge swaths of public housing lying empty.
Paul: (Long pause). There’s so much to take in. Lets’ go to—because I, I wasn’t to begin to emotionally understand what is going on inside one person, or many people, as, as you're taking up arms or you're fighting politically, or whatever it is that, that’s somebody is doing. So, um, you lied about your age—
Jake: Yep.
Paul: --to, to get it. You were … 15, 17? What were you?
Jake: I, I was only, uh, 15 when I went into the IRA. You're supposed to be 17. But I’d already been in the Junior IRA, um, and since I was 10. So I had made—I know this sounds crazy—but I had made a conscious decision at the age of 10—that I had to fight the state. That the state here was corrupt to the core. And that we weren’t going to go down on our knees; that we were going to fight it. And so, you were preparing all along to fight the state. And by the time I was 14, I’m blown up, um, for the first time …
Paul: What happened?
Jake: When we, um … I was never convicted of it, so it was an accidental explosion (chuckles).
Paul: Uh huh (chuckles).
Jake: We said that we found some material in a field and it had exploded and blew us up. So they were basically nail bombs which detonated and—I was lucky I was at the … center of the blast. And, one of my friends was a bit further and he got badly injured. He, his whole leg was smashed, and it threw him backwards, up over a hedge. I just got blew … explosions are strange things. Somebody whose closer to the explosion can sometimes be safer than somebody who’s further away, cuz it’s the shockwave—
Paul: Right.
Jake: —that, that do the damage. And also the debris.
Paul: Yeah.
Jake: So, um … the only way I can explain it is that everything this was going in super high speed, but it was in slow motion.
Paul: Uh hmm.
Jake: And if that’s very contradictory. So … everything’s happening, but then you're watching all this happening. And, literally I can still see the air … vibrating as it coming toward—and there’s the flash of, of heat. And you feel the heat simultaneously. There’s a flash and ... I just realized that my clothes are being blown off me. And I’m falling backwards. And I was unconscious for a while (stumbles on words). My nose was completely packed with muck and soil. And my eyes—I couldn’t really see. And, um … that was it. Got blew up (chuckles).
Paul: And, and, and you were 14.
Jake: Fourteen, yeah. (Long pause) But I remember in the midst of it going, “Wow (laughs) … I’m somersaulting! (chuckles)” And my friend was somersaulting backwards over a, a hawthorn hedge. (Pause) We obviously weren’t worried about them diseases, because the guy who rescued me threw me in the back of an old Ford Cortina Estate, which had bags of manure in it (both laugh) to take us to the hospital (both laugh). So we were obviously immune.
Paul: You know, one of the things I … I don’t want to do—even though some people will probably be upset that I don’t ask these questions—is, I don’t want to, um, turn this interview into, you know, holding someone to some type of moral, uh, standard and saying, “But, you know, there were innocent people,” etc., etc. I may ask that at some point, but that’s not the … there are other podcasts (Jake: Yep) for that. And, my personal view is that, you know, the old trope that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. I … while I disagree with many of the means the IRA used, um, I have always seen them as, as freedom fighters because they were left no other choice. They had no other way to fight.
Jake: Well, I, I, I, uh, I mean—in relation to the morality of arm struggles: if you decide that you're going to engage in an arm struggle, and you engage in that arm struggle, you are collectively responsible for all of the actions that that arm struggle entails. I—there were, in my view, two, um, tactics that the IRA employed, which were totally wrong. The first one was the targeting of Protestants, which happened in the mid-70s. So when Loyalists were bombing Catholic bars and shooting Catholics, they retaliated by shooting Protestants. It was wrong, it shouldn’t have happened, and, uh, it was, uh, counter-productive in my view. It was also, in my view, um, the result of the sectarian poison that permeates a society. And that’s on all sides. The problem is that, um, all too often, Nationalists will go, “Yes, sectariaism’s terrible. Those Unionists and sectarian … hmm, well.” You know. On the Loyalist side, there were going, “The IRA area sectarian-based, but (unintelligible).” I mean … no one can wash their hands of it; everyone here is imbued with that tribal hatred because of British policy.
Paul: When you—
Jake: British policy decreed it.
Paul: When you were putting the nail bomb together, that was not intended, uh, to hurt innocent people. (Jake: No, no, no) That was meant to destroy property?
Jake: Not to kill British soldiers.
Paul: Oh, ok.
Jake: (chuckles)
Paul: Uh—
Jake: So, I mean—I, I … I said there were two things—that was the first. And the second, which I thought was hugely reprehensible, was the decision to disappear people … who were informers. So there were a number of people who were taken away and buried in unmarked graves. Some of their bodies have been recovered and some haven’t. That was an abomination; it shouldn’t happened. And, um, the … the decision to … I have no problem with executing informers. People who informed, in my view, had carried out an act of treason. And, if found guilty, they should be executed. But if you're taking a stand that someone deserves to be executed, you should stand over your decision.
Paul: And not just hide the truth of what happened—
Jake: And not hide the truth of what happened. So that policy of hiding bodies was wrong, and, and should—but, again, that, that’s all … that’s ok for me to say something here. I wasn’t in the position of the person who made that decision, so I, I don’t know what that were (Paul: Um ,hmm), what they thinking. But in absolute terms—it shouldn’t’ve happened. Was wrong, and the families were left with no closure of any kind. Not that being able to bury a body is any great comfort to somebody who has an empty chair in their house. The other thing I, I, um, am absolutely clear on, is that … you can’t try and read back at 40 years distance and say, “Well, we could (unintelligible).” I am absolutely convinced that the Nationalists community didn’t have an option. That the minute we began to demand change of a very moderate type, we were beaten into the ground.
Paul: Yeah.
Jake: And, the only way that we could respond to that was by organizing ourselves. And once that spiral begins, people begin to organize, the state begins to repress. Then that, that’s where conflicts come out of. Now, the, um … the moral question is, is very straight forward, for me. I mean, I think that every person, um, needs to live with the choices they make. And, um, it really isn’t good enough—particularly in the sense of hypocrites who (chuckles) run the state and who see no difficulty in the bombing of children and men and women at weddings in Afghanistan or Iraq, are going to call me a terrorist. Come on. (Chuckles) Are you real? And people who will terrorize people with the violence of exploitative capitalism, who will force people, uh, to work 15 hours a day, uh, basically to put food on the table. Those people have no right to judge.
Paul: Yeah. I’ll often think of the, uh, person who watches an NFL player kneeling during the national anthem and saying it’s obscene. As if someone being shot, who was unarmed, isn’t obscene.
Jake: Um hmm.
Paul: Let’s talk about, um, being jailed. (Pause) And, and that experience. That’s one of the things that fascinates me the most about the, the history of the IRA: is the strength that was gathered during the most difficult times in the, in the movement. And, you were—I mean you had a front-row seat. You were in H Block with Bobby Sands, who is the, uh, kind of the—would it be fair to say the Martin Luther King kind of, of, uh…
Jake: Well, I think that if you, of you look at, um—I’m always very suspect of, um … the cult of the personality.
Paul: Yeah.
Jake: I think it’s a dangerous thing. I think it, uh, it was in Taoist, um, philosophy that the description of a good leader is that leader who is able to say, in all honesty, the people have done it for themselves. You know, so … if you're that type of leader who is—I’m not saying Bobby Sands was (chuckles). The media creates this; the media does this. It’s part of the human condition. We need an individual to admire and to look up to—
Paul: And hopefully with good hair.
Jake: And hopefully with good hair (laughs)!
Paul: He had a nice head of hair, doesn’t he?
Jake: Isn’t he some guy (laughs)?
Paul: But he had that 70s collar. It’s really a shame that that had to be, he had to be …
Jake: (Laughs) That was the 70s. Oh my god.
Paul: Thank god you couldn’t see the rest of his leisure suit in that, in that picture.
Jake: So, um, that was taken in the cages. Yes, I mean, I, um … for me, the H Blocks were really the fulcrum on which the future direction of the struggle was forged.
[00:48:37] Paul: And we will be back in just a moment to hear about, uh, the H Blocks. But before we do that, I want to give a shout out to Blinkist, who is a new sponsor of ours. If you're like me, the list of books you want to read is never ending, and there’s no time to read the all, thankfully. Blinkist has solved this problem once and for all. Blinkist is the only app that takes thousands of the best-selling non-fiction books and distills them down to their most impactful elements. So, you can read or listen to them and expand your knowledge, all in under 15 minutes: anywhere, anytime, from your phone. I checked out, uh, the biography of Leonardo (chuckles) –that’s a tough wo-, tough name to say—Leonardo da Vinci by, uh, Walter Isaacson. And the Blinkist, uh, version of this, I read in about, I dunno, 15, 20 minutes. And I learned so much about his life, what made his paintings great, what his passions were, how he synthesized, uh, his curiosity in different, uh, areas of art and science into the genius creations that we know him for today. So, right now, for a limited time, Blinkist has a special offer just for you guys. Go to blinkist.com/mental to start your free seven-day trial. That’s blinkist—spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T—blinkinst.com/mental to start your free seven-day trial. Blinkist.com/mental.
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[00:51:27 ] And I wanna give some love to our returning sponsor, Calm. Let’s be honest: we are stressed, we are anxioust … anxioust (chuckles)? We are anxious, uh, and we always need more tools to cope and, for me, to sleep better. And you guys should check out Calm. It’s the number one app for sleep meditation and relaxation. It gives you the tools you need to live a happier, healthy, and more mindful like. Just five minutes of Calm can change your whole day. It was named Appl’s 2017 App of the Year; that’s no small feat! So, go to calm.com/mental and get 25 percent off a Calm premium subscription, which includes hundreds of hours of premium programs like guided meditations on anxiety, stress, focus, and relationships—with a brand new meditation each day called the Daily Calm. And, another thing that the Calm app has that I really love is the sleep stories. I believe I, I mentioned it one last week’s, uh, podcast. The story that Stephen Fry narrates about a field of lavender in France, which you would think, “How could that possibly be interesting?”—listen to it. It … calmed me so much, I was floating in and out of consciousness listening to it. So, check it out. For a limited time, you guys, you listeners can get 25 percent off a Calm premium subscription at calm.com/mental. It includes unlimited access to all of Calm’s amazing content. So get started today at calm.com/mental; that’s calm.com/mental. And now, back to, uh, the interview with Jake.
[00:53:19] Jake: In the mid-1970s, we were coming out of a disastrous cease-fire. A new Northern, young IRA leadership was assuming control. Nationally, the old guard were, were gradually, uh, giving way. In the cages of Long Kesh, for example, there were very different views within the movement. So, I had to apply through the IRA education officer—this was when we had political status—to get books out of the library. So I asked to get Das Kapital and The Gundries (sp.). And he sent for me for an interview and asked me, “Why do you want these books?” And I said, “To read them.” (Paul chuckles). And he said, “Well, I understand you want to read them. But, will you be promoting communism and communist ideology and literature after you read them?” And I says, “How will I know; I haven’t read them. (Paul and Jake laugh)” And it was one of these, and he said, “Well, I’m warning you: you're not allowed to promote communism.” And I said, “Right ok. (Paul Laughs) Yeah; whatever.”
Paul: And, for the, uh, listeners … correct me if I’m wrong, but, um … prior to the, uh, the, uh, second hunger strike, uh, people who were captured and jailed that were part of the IRA were given political status—meaning they were treated different than a, uh, criminal who robbed a, robbed a store.
Jake: Yep.
Paul: You were able to wear your own clothes, you were able to mix freely. And—
Jake: Organize.
Paul: Yes, you were still in jail, but it was, it was, it was almost like when the mob would go to jail, you know, in Goodfellas—
Jake: Yeah.
Paul: You, you have privileges that an average person—
Jake: I mean, ours were very straightforward. We were inside Nissan compounds. So barbwire compounds with four Nissan huts. Really, like second world war concentration camps, that’s what we were in. And inside the wire, we were in absolute control. So we carried out education classes and political lectures, bombing lectures, gun lectures. Everything, the full gamut and (unintelligible). We also did—no IRA prisoner was allowed to be, um, idle. So, you either had to work, you had to make handicrafts, you had to clean huts, paint huts, maintain discipline, or you had to educate yourself. You had no choice, you had to. And, I remember—really funny—I, I taught remedial English to prisoners who had come in who had no basic education. And there was one guy in particular, and he used to hate the start of every class. I used to—when I eventually found him, I tell him, “Why you—you can’t hate, you're in a jail (Paul chuckles).I’m eventually gonna fail you (Paul chuckles), and you have to come to the class (Paul laughs).” But he, he doesn’t know—he just avoided the class.
Paul: Boy, I bet he hated Gaelic (laughs)!
Jake: He HATED Irish (laughs)!
Paul: You were teaching Irish or English?
Jake: I was teaching both. I was teaching Irish; but, in this class, I was teaching English, teaching remedial English. But the Irish classes were voluntary. But education classes were compulsory; you had to attend something, whether it be geography, history … anything. There were all sorts of subjects to offer. But they were all … we were all self-taught. Cages— 1976, anyone arrested after the first of March, about 1976, lost their political status. So I come out of prison in April 77; and I was re-arrested in May 77. So, from being in the cages, I went straight into the H Blocks. On you arrival in the H Blocks on sentencing—we arrived into a, uh, basically a row of cubicles with wooden doors on them. And you're put in their wooden cubicle. One of the screws who came—
Paul: That’s the nickname for the, uh ….
Jake: Prison wardens.
Paul: Prison wardens.
Jake: One of the screws who can to the door was one of the screws I knew from the cages. And he opened the door and he said, “The shoe’s on the other foot now. No political status here. (unintelligible). They went away and came back—there were five or six of them—and they had a prison uniform. And they said to me, “Strip.” And I refused, so they stripped me, forcibly stripped me. And, um, said, “Put on the uniform.” I just didn’t speak. And so they, they basically battered me and then threw me by the hair naked across the reception. Threw me in their van and took me to the H Blocks. And when you come to the H Blocks, you're in a blacked-out van. You can’t really see any—we’d no idea about the H Blocks other than what we’re hearing. It’s terrible, people are being tortured—they said that. So we didn’t know what to expect. We simply knew we weren’t going to wear a prison uniform, cuz we had decided that if we accepted the status of criminals, it would damage not just us and our integrity, but it would damage the entire struggle. So we decided we weren’t going to, to do it. So, the, the van backed up—there are a set of double doors, uh, covered by an iron grill. Two wooden doors inside. And the van would back up and the doors would open. And we would be taken out and through—through the grills, there was a second set of grills. And you're right in this rectangular space. And, um, there were maybe about 12 screws in total around the, the space. So, they start pushing and prodding and slapping about: “Put the uniform on.” All the usual nonsense. And, and they said, “You have to go in and see the governor.” So, I was thrown into this, just a room off the rectangle. And there was this guy in a suit sitting behind the desk. And the screws were punching me and slapping me: “Put your hands on the side call the governor, ‘Sir.’” You're standing there naked, and, and just ignoring them as best you can. You're getting slapped in the back of the head. And, um, in the middle of all this, the governor says, um, “Officer, would you put the charge to the prisoner?” And so you're standing, the screw turns around and says, um, “Prisoner #289, would you put on your prison clothes and go do your prison work?” And I just stood. And the governor says, uh, “In the absence of a, of a response from the prisoner, can you please enter a plea of ‘not guilty’ on his behalf?” And the screw goes, “I enter a plea of ‘not guilty’ on his behalf.” And the governor says—and this guy goes, “So, is there any other evidence?” And the, the screw says, “No. I’ve, I’ve asked the prisoner to put on his prison clothes and go to work, and he’s refused.” “Ok, in light of the evidence before me,” he says, “I award you three days cellular confinement, three days loss of bed clothes, 14 days loss of privileges, 14 days loss of radio, 14 days loss of television, 14 days loss of reading material, 14 days loss of association, and I make a further award of 14 days loss of remission—” which meant that for every 14 days you were in, and extra 14 days was added to your sentence. So, I was then trailed out and beaten an (unintelligible). And they would continue with that charade every two weeks when we were “on the blanket.” And, we would just—
Paul: And just, just describe what “on the blanket” meant.
Jake: “On the blanket” meant I was brought down, um, inside a cell that you could take about five paces from the door to a barred window. At the back of the cell, there were two heating pipes. And in the cell, um, there were two mattresses on the floor, three gray blankets and a white linen towel, and a water gallon, a gallon of water, and a piss pot. That was the—and a Bible, one Bible. The King James Revised Standard version—
Paul: Yes, of course (chuckles).
Jake: (Laughs) So, that, that was what you had. The, um—once your door closed, that was you … you get out once a month for half an hour for a family visit and once a week at a hour for a mass. The rest of the time, you were in your cell 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And we were to stay like that for five years, “on the blanket.”
Paul: No exercise.
Jake: No exer—well you got exercise by walking five paces up and down the cell (chuckles). But that was it. The other this was that—as the blanket protests began to gather pace, and we escalated internal wash protest—we were smearing excrement on the walls. And by that stage, um—the, the reason for that was we refused to leave the cell because every time you were leaving the cell, you were being battered and beaten.
Paul: And they were dumping your piss and shit on you.—
Jake: And throwing your shit onto you, as you walked out.
Paul: Cuz you, you had to, to, empty your—
Jake: You had to leave to empty your—
Paul: Your, your pot.
Jake: And as you would normally—as soon as you walked out of your cell, a screw would fucking up around you. And then you would get a beating. You know, so, we just decided that we’re not leaving the fucking cells. And an order was given to not leave the cells … to slap out. So we … at that stage, the screws begun to pour VERY heavy, ammonia-based disinfectant into the cells. And, the fact of it was that (unintelligible) gas would burn your eyes and burn your nostrils. So were smashed the glass in the windows. So we were left with four concrete pillars, which were the bars of the cell. And, um … they—1978, we’d all the windows broken. And the temperature that year plummeted to -15. So we were naked in the cell with three blankets and a bitumen floor. It was ABSOLUTELY freezing. I never experienced cold like it in my life.
Paul: And you guys were called the Blanketmen because your, your clothes were the blanket they gave you to sleep on.
Jake: We, we wrapped the blanket around ourselves. And that became the symbol of the protest, the Blanketmen. And there were also women in (unintelligible) Prison, in a similar condition. But they didn’t wear a blanket because they had their own clothes, and they weren’t forced to wear prison uniform. So … basically that—I remember the … I can’t precisely pinpoint it, but I do know that somewhere in the back of my head, I kept getting more and more conscious that I was beginning to hate the screws. And somewhere I was saying, “Don’t go down that road. That, that way there lies ruin and disaster—”
Paul: Cuz you're not gonna win that fight.
Jake: You, you’ll, you’ll turn in on yourself. You’ll consume yourself with hatred. So, I just simply said, “Look. What I have to realize is we’re waging a war against these people; an arms struggle. So, they’re not going to be nice to us. But, um … but, it, it was extremely difficult because I remember when they, when they scalded us … um, in 1978. And they started at two o’clock in the afternoon. They come back after lunch. And normally, when the screws are away at lunch, they would take a drink. So, we heard a lot of commotion, uh, out on the wing. And … rattling of buckets. And the next thing, a cell opened, and there was a scream. And we going, “What the fu-?” And the next thing a guy shouted out in Irish: “(unintelligible). (The water’s boiling.)” And so they were scalding prisoners with, with water. And they worked their way down. When they got to my cell—I was at the end of the wing—and the screw opened the door, and he says to me, “You're the bastard giving the orders in this wing? We’re keeping you to the end, and we’re going to give you a special treat.” So they burned their way, scalding people down two sides of the wing. And, um—so the best part of, must have been an hour—I was lying in the cell, listening to cell after cell of people being scalded and screaming. And I was mentally trying to psyche myself up for it. So, what I said to myself was, “I’m not going to utter a sound. I’m going to make—I’m not gonna give them—I’m not gonna dignify what they do with a response.” And, so, I’m standing in the middle of the cell when they eventually got, with a blanket pulled up on the back of my head to give me some protection. And the screw who had been there earlier says, “Pull the blanket off that bastard. I want them scalded properly.” So they, they tore the blanket off me, and threw the water. And I let out a scream that shook the entire cell. It was—the pain was indescribable. Indescribable. And, I could literally feel the blisters rising on the back of my neck, my ass, my legs … the back and the arms. And, um, screws just walked away. And five minutes later, one of them come back, and he opened the door. And he had a tin of (unintelligible), which is an antiseptic cream. And he threw it on the floor. And he had five cigarettes in his hand, and he handed me—cuz you were never allowed—so he haded a cigarette. He says, “Have yourself a wee smoke. You deserve it after what you’ve been through.” And this guy’s fucking schizophrenic.
Paul: Wow!
Jake: He’s just scalded me. And yet, somewhere in the midst of that—
Paul: Yeah.
Jake: —there’s a human.
Paul: That’s probably so he could sleep with himself.
Jake: Cuz he could sleep with himself. And, I sort of –that, that to me … I went, “Well, yes … because we’re engaged in our arms struggle, we’re constantly having to subdue our humanity. So the only way to survive this is to hold onto your humanity and to try and see, even in the worst of circumstances, the human in the screw. Because, you know, they didn’t wake up one morning and decide to be monsters.
Paul: Right. So, so, what do you do with that, when you have to carry out a mission to go assassinate someone? Is it because that is for the greater good of freedom, whereas this would be a personal vendetta because that guy humiliated you?
Jake: Yeah, I think that—I mean … I, I do believe that screws were legitimate targets; they were targeted by the IRA. And they were targeted because they were on the front line of trying to break the struggle through breaking prisoners. And also, they were … I mean, these guys were torturers. I, I mean they were torturing naked fucking teenagers. So … they, um, put … I think when you … when you're engaged in an arms struggle, you have to always be very calculating in what you're doing. You have to, um, you have to be ruthless, um, and you … well, make all of your endeavors to kill the enemy. So, that, that’s what arms struggles are, that’s what wars are, that’s what people are paid money and turned into soldiers and sent to places in southeast Asia, um, to do. And, I think that the … the consequences of that for the individual, um, are usually, um, very, very deep-seated and sometimes don’t emerge for years and years and years. I mean, I, um … I was active in the IRA and the Republican movement, um, for the best part of 30 years. And, in 1997, I decided that I disagreed with the strategy that was being pursued, and I resigned. And I literally went home; I didn’t engage in any other political activity. At that stage, I thought that the IRA would split and go in on itself, around the whole peace thing. I was absolutely convinced that arms struggle had run its course. I was absolutely convinced that there was a way to pursue the struggle without (unintelligible) the arms any longer. And, so I was fully in favor of, um, demilitarizing the struggle. But, I didn’t think it was a good idea to begin a false peace process, because the peace process that was began allowed unionism to feel it had still occupied some moral high ground, and that what this process was about was about teaching the IRA that they’d been bad boys and should put on sack cloth and ashes and be good boys. That wasn’t what happened in the (unintelligible). And the process is so flawed because that truth hasn’t been faced up to. This conflict was always going to come. It was going to come because that was the nature of forcing two tribes to live in a small space, with one tribe dominant. It was always going to, to emerge as a conflict. And so, if you want to deal with the conflict, there’s a requirement for a fair bit of honesty. And the honesty—I mean, people will say, “Oh, well we need to know all of the details of what happened to the victims.” Yeah, they were killed (incredulous chuckle)! They were killed by people who were pursuing various agendas; that’s what happened. I mean, um … families, um … yes, are, are entitled to closure and, uh ... But the entire political process has been hamstrung (Paul: Um hmm) by this, dealing with, with victims because it hasn’t been sorted. It has to be sorted; there has to be some way to, to tackle it head on. But you can’t have a proper political process where one of the main protagonists –the people who constructed and kept the Orange State alive—have the audacity to say that they won’t go under … um, par with (unintelligible) except that they’ll hold their noses. I dare them (chuckles). These are the people who perpetrated YEARS of oppression, YEARS of torture. These are the people who unleashed the state forces to shoot down eight-year-old girls and ten-year-old boys at point-blank range with plastic bullets. And they dare to condemn the violence of the oppressed. I mean, I just … I find that intolerable. And I think that was the big flaw in the peace process. I thought that what the IRA should do was very simply say, “We’re dumping our arms. We’re leaving the stage.” And leave it. Leave the stage, and then let a proper process begin. But this … you had this, “Well, we’ll turn a blind eye; we’ll wink and we’ll let,”—you know … and it was just a flawed process, in my view. Maybe I’m wrong and the people who, who followed that process are right and (unintelligible). But I think 20 years on from the Good Friday agreement, the violence that fueled the struggle is there, still there in a very raw form. And it doesn’t take very much to ignite it.
Paul: Not it’s, it’s more than a few people that I've talked to since I’ve been here, especially with, uh, what’s gonna happen with Brexit (Jake: Yeah.) and possible borders being reinstalled, uh, between Norther Ireland and, uh, the, the State of Ireland—apparently has a lot of people worried. But I want to move things back to the H-Block and the hunger strike. And, what are your memories, uh, and what were some, some, some moments there that you thought—I do-,I don’t know if I can continue, or where you felt at your lowest.
Jake: Well, my lowest was, um … well, the first things I … every day was a battle. Cuz this place was … was no picnic. There was random violence, you were always on edge, you were always stressed, you didn’t know what was gonna happen. You’d run into appalling conditions. The food was, was, was shit. You’d nothing to read, nothing to do; only a Bible. So, quite early on, I, I adopted a strategy that I spend a little time in the cell as possible. So, I would get up in the morning, um, I would read a bit of the Bible. I would each the breakfast. I would watch the crows go on to raid some farmer’s field. I would pace the cell for a while. And then, in my head, I would follow the crows and go for a walk … long side a river. And every time I get interrupted and brought back to the cell, I’d start to walk again, and I’d do that. So I spent a lot of time outside of the, the prison, in your head. They can’t imprison a spirit. You can physically imprison me, but they can’t imprison your spirit. And no matter what they do, that’s what’ll keep you going. So, we also were, um, hugely involved in, in very vociferous debates about the way forward and what we needed to do. And, um, we constantly—prisoners never live in the present. They always live in the past, they always talking about what they did on the outside and what they're going to do when they get back out. Nobody ever talks about the here and now, cuz it’s too horrible to contemplate (chuckles). So, um … I go through it by, um … When I describe the, the conditions as ABSOLUTELY appalling, the other … the converse (unintelligible) it’s the most exciting time intellectually in my life. People were, were very—debating very deep issues with great honesty and integrity. And also, there was a bond of comrades up among the prisoners, which was unbreakable. And, and even today, you know … 35 years later, a lot of Blanketmen I didn’t meet, you never knew what they looked like. So you’ll meet them somewhere. And somebody will say, “I know who this is.” And you hear their name: “Oh, Jesus!” And you know you know their name, you know their family, you know all about them, but you’ve never actually seen them face-to-face. And your first impulse, um, is just to hug each other. Just a big, quiet hug and that’s it. And that’s very common among prisoners. The other thing was … I would overthink things at times. But, in the jail, because it’s an all-male atmosphere, no one touches each other cuz it’s, um … it’s … you’re afraid of any form of intimacy, in case … I don’t know, somebody’s a sexual threat; I don’t … Whatever, but there is a complete reluctance—
Paul: Nobody hugged in prison?
Jake: Not in prison, no.
Paul: Was that something that was spoken out loud, or it was just understood.
Jake: No, it was just understood; it just happened. And, so … that, that’s how it was, was my experience with—
Paul: Would you think that was homophobia, or—
Jake: It was—I don’t think it was homophobia as such, I mean because … I mean, I don’t think that, in general, IRA volunteers were homophobic. I mean, they don’t have issues with, with—I mean your sexuality doesn’t affect your operational capacity (chuckles).
Paul: Yeah.
Jake: So, I, I—but I do think it’s probably within the male psyche.
Paul: Uh hm.
Jake: There’s that genuine fear that if you’re robbed of that opposite sex, you’ll somehow be lured to become a—it’s ridiculous. You can’t change your sexuality.
Paul: Right! Yes.
Jake: But, I mean, but even though it’s not logical—
Paul: Yes, and you were teenagers—
Jake: And we’re teenagers—
Paul: —and I imagine the biggest fear being in there is that your … fellow prisoners would view you as weak or soft.
Jake: Soft. I think it’s that—that’s more that than the sexuality. You, um, not just—our society was very much all male. Bringham (sp.) was very much—my father was, “Oh, dry your eyes and get on with! Sure, it’s only a cut and you’d be pissing blood. Get out there! Stop crying like a wee girl.” So all that … you’re constantly conditioned to be macho. You know, that’s the messages you're getting all the time: “Big boys don’t cry.” “Dry your eyes.” “Shut up; get on with.” So you're constantly getting that, and society in generally. And that’s doubly reinforced within a military culture.
Paul: And ironically, the one time you need a hug the most—
Jake: (chuckles) —is when you can’t get it!
Paul: Yeah. Is, is when you’re in prison, and your shit’s on the wall and it’s freezing and all you have is a blanket, and the only heat is scalding water being thrown on your back.
Jake: No, it’s a, one of the ironies of life.
Paul: Yeah.
Jake: But, um … the other thing that … my very lowest moment, and food was very important because they starved us. They literally—
Paul: Before you starved yourselves.
Jake: Before we starved ourselves, and the hunger strikes took 10 men to death. And they starved us, so, they, they, they kept their rations right at a minimum. So you're always hungry, and you were always cold. And, when—between the first and the second hunger strikes, our wing had come off the blanket protest, and we’re phased into our (unintelligible) protest, and were phased into cells with furniture, and Bobby Sands was in the negotiation with the prison—that collapsed in January. So we destroyed the cells; we wrecked the cells. And they come in the early hours—nobody would, between midnight and two o’clock, but it was later one—and they moved us all. They battered us, um, out in the vans, and moved us all to, um another block. And they threw us in the cells, which had pools of water on the floor, where they’d been cleaning the shit on the walls. And, um, the locked the door. And you were on your own. They kept us all in single cells. And—it’ was freezing. It was bitterly cold that January; it was, like 78 and 79 was ABSOLUTELY freezing. And, the next year, from 80 and 81 was the same; January was EXTREMELY cold. So we were moved in early January, um. And … it was … you were trying to get your—my feet were purple, so you're trying to get yourself through this. We’d absolutely nothing: no bed, no blankets, nothing. Naked, in the cell. Water: freezing. No windows. And, uh (chuckles), so, uh … you're, you're pacing yourself (unintelligible), so we were singing and talking and trying to keep morale up. But then everybody gets very quiet about four or five in the morning, and that’s the coldest part of the day. So the temperature’s dropping again, and you're just exhausted. You can’t get to sleep, you can’t lie down in a puddle and try and sleep; it’s just isn’t gonna work. So we’re walking the cells, and … the next morning, the screws arrive, and I’m like, “Fuck. Blankets, we’ll get blankets.” You know, we’ll get blankets to dry the floor and be able to lie down. No blankets, not mattress. So we’d all never complain. They threw the breakfast, and the breakfast was tea, a bowl of corn flakes, and bread—which was thrown into the corn flakes, so the bread was soaking. So, you were only able to salvage (Paul: Uh hmm) the crust. Then, uh, lunchtime, they’ll have to give us the blankets at lunch. No; lunchtime came and gone—no blankets, no mattresses, and, um, I just, I just … I can’t fucking do this. We’ll survive the tea time. So, tea time came, and the boys at the table end said, “It’s corned beef and chips,” which was a really great dinner because you got … it’s was tasty. It was a nice meal. And they opened my door, and the screw had the blue plate, and there was a square of corned beef and no chips. I just went, “Aw, fuck.” They closed the door. So I sat down to eat, eat the—and I looked at the corned beef and screw shouted out, “Now, don’t be feeling you're persecuted. There’s two chips below the corned beef.” And well, there were two chips. And I just felt like screaming at the top of my voice. I just totally, almost lost it. Oh, um, just had to refocus.
Paul: What, um, what had happened to the food?
Jake: He had … they didn’t give me any chips, but they hid two chips under the corned beef—
Paul: Uh huh.
Jake: —and then shouted out, “You're not being persecuted. You got some chips.” It was just … it was just like a … a body blow, it’s just huge … So eventually, um, I just pulled myself together as you always do and went, “Hey, ok. Corned beef and two chips; that’s what we’re having.” So we ate the corned beef and two chips up, ‘til the other one started shouting out, “(unintelligible)” Everybody was in the same body. But that was probably the lowest point, uh, just that … it’s when you endure to a point where … your, your mind has said, “This is going to get better. There’s going to be a way.” So, I, I’d kind of foolishly, psychologically prepared myself for a plate of chips. And when they weren’t there, it was … it was, just, all of the shit that you’d been through the whole night was focused on the lack of chips (chuckles).
Paul: Yeah.
Jake: But, um …
Paul: I, I can’t imagine the depths of, of hopelessness when, when you're in a situation like that. Were you … still in H Block when people when people were dying from the hunger strike?
Jake: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right through the hunger strike.
Paul: What, what, what was that …
Jake: Awful. The, um … the thing with—I remember Bobby coming back when the first hunger strike ended. And, he said very clearly, “Look, we’re going to try and negotiate this,” he says. “But, see with the pressure of the hunger strike on, I think the Brits will, will just reneg, will do nothing.” He said, “There’s going to be a second hunger strike.” He was taking to me and Bik McFarland; we were in a cell next door. He says, “There’s going to be a second strike. I’ve leaving, and I’m going to die.” Says, “It’ll take at least me to die, before the Brits will move.” He says, “Because after the first hunger strike—”So he consciously decided to die. He was 26, uh, years and 9 months old when he made the decision he was going to die …
Paul: What do you remember thinking or feeling in that moment when he said that?
Jake: (Long sigh) Can I die? Why are we prepared to die? We’re probably strong enough; I know Bobby will, will—but what about the rest of us? So, you started thinking about the hunger strike and whether or not you want to take part in them.—
Paul: Because … they chose the, the commanders—
Jake: Chose—
Paul: —leadership chose who would be—
Jake: No, you volunteered.
Paul: Oh, you did?
Jake: You had to volunteer. And, uh, once you volunteered, um, your name had to be submitted to the IRA structures in the ce-, in the prison, who would make a decision whether or not your name would be forwarded to the army council. And if your name went to the army council, the army council had the final say as to whether or not you would be allowed to hunger strike. So—
Paul: But more people, applied—
Jake: A hundred people—
Paul: –than were chosen.
Jake: A hundred people had applied. And when the hunger strike ended, there were still, um, 60 plus people waiting to go on hunger strike.
Paul: And, and one of them died from complications from, from his body being so emaciated, even though … he, the—
Jake: Martin Hurson.
Paul: Yeah.
Jake: Martin Hurson died after 47 days, um, which was prematurely for, for a hunger striker. Most hunger strikers lasted 56, on. The longest, um, hunger striker who survived was Lawrence (sp.) McKeown, who was 72 days on hunger strike and survived.
Paul: Good lord. (Jake chuckles). Good lord.
Jake: That’s a long time.
Paul: What, what do you remember as, as, uh—was Bobby in the cell next to you?
Jake: They put Bobby—once he went on hunger strike, they put him in the cell—26, which was directly across from me. And they kept him there for 21 days. And then they moved him to the prison hospital. So, when he was, uh, on the hunger strike, um, Philip Rooney from—who was next door to him—he would begin cleaning the cell out. And they would let us in now and again to change his water and stuff. So you’d be talking to him. He, um … his ninth day on hunger strike, he turned 27. And, um … the, um … at night I, I would shout the communications from our block over to the other blocks and over to the other wings. And we shouted Irish. So I, I shouted over to the boys in H or in A wing all the messages. And guy called (unintelligible), he was shouting back. And he says, “Oh, (says something in Irish)”, so he’s shouting, “Just one more thing before you go.” And, um, 40 voices just shouted out “(says something in Irish)—Happy birthday, Bobby.” And, um … we had a concert; we sang songs that whole night. He got up to the door and sang; made a wee bit of a speech. And, uh … I knew it was the last time we were going to see him. And, um, it was emotional then, and it’s emotional now, even though it’s years later.
Paul: If, if you could go back in time and … say something, to him or to your younger self in those moments, what would adult you say to either Bobby or you or anyone in the block?
Jake: Provided you maintained your integrity, nothing can destroy you. It can diminish you, but nothing can destroy you. Stay true to yourself. That, that would be it. It wouldn’t … I wouldn’t have any pearls of wisdom looking back.
Paul: Would you say anything to Bobby?
Jake: (Sighs) Just what I was said at the time: “Slán, comrade.”
Paul: Goodbye?
Jake: Goodbye. I just … (deep sigh) I feel, um, indescribably indebted, uh, to you for the sacrifice you're making. And I don’t know, even though I volunteered for—I don’t know, no one knows they're going to die until their at the point pf death. It’s one of those unknowables. You, you, you can tell yourself you’ll die. You can—but to actually, um—I remember back, coming back, and, um … Fact I got to see him, um … he’d only (unintelligible) to live at this stage. And Bik was the OC. And, um, we walked in this cell, and he said that … Bobby’s hearing was obviously very acute. But he, he lifted his hand up and says, “(says something in Irish)—Is that you Bik, mate?” And he says, “(says something in Irish)—I can’t see.” Come over to the bed, and Bik would go to the bed and he took Bik’s hand—he had a frame over his bed with a sheet on it to keep the sheet off his, his body; his body was so frail and the skin would have broken. And he said, um, “(says something in Irish)—Tell the lads not to worry; I’m going to be (unintelligible).” I dunno, uh … I try not to think on it too much, even now it’s, um, it’s emotional.
Paul: I appreciate you sharing that. I mean, that’s, that’s some … that’s some heavy shit, and it’s so personal. I, I … I fe- … thank you. Thank you for sharing that. (Pause) I don’t want to, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, so … the other thing I would like to know is how the conflict and what you experienced—actually, before, before I do that, are there moments that haunt you about violence that you (Jake: Yeah.) committed, and are you comfortable talking about any of that?
Jake: I don’t –I mean … I don’t want to discuss details because the difficulty with that is that … we are still prosecutable.
Paul: Right.
Jake: But, uh, yes, there are still things that bother me. There are, um … it’s just (unintelligible). I mean, you, um …
Paul: Do you wake up at night some, sometimes? Or have nightmares, or—
Jake: Yeah! You will … not nightmares, none of that. But, I mean … you do … and … I mean, I’d look sometimes at the completeness of my own family—
Paul: Um hmm.
Jake: —and, um … just go, you know our actions robbed so many families of that peace. But I mean, I don’t in any way, um … It’s wrong to say I don’t regret it; I regret that fact that any of the conflict took place. But I am not making excuses for the armed actions. I thought they were necessary. I believe today they were necessary. I believe that the people with power are the people who have questions to answer, not the people without power, cuz the people without power struggle against power. And, you know, all conflict’s horrible. And, I would say to anybody: If, if you find yourself in a situation where conflict seems inevitable, try EVERYTHING, everything to avoid the descent into conflict. Because once you're in it, it’s extremely difficult to unravel it. So, um … yeah, that … we all have regrets.
Paul: What are something—and this would be the, um, last question. What are some things that, uh, trigger you today that you experienced that—
Jake: Well, I—
Paul:—that the average person might not imagine someone who’s been …
Jake: I, uh … I was very, um, I was very, very together. All very, very together. I, I left the IRA, I went straight into employment, I worked. I’ve never been idle in my life. And, on the 21st of January 2016, I pulled up to go into work. (unintelligible), “I can’t go into here.” I don’t know what was wrong with me. I don’t know … I just, um … I don’t know. I, so, I got back into the car—
Paul: Was it a feeling of, of fear, or—
Jake: Just immobility. Just in-, incapable of, of just ... making a dis—so I went, drove to my mother’s grave, and just sat and said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But there’s something very, very fucking wrong here.” And I went home and I says to my wife, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but …” and progressively over, um … three, four months, I just couldn’t face anybody. Couldn’t answer the door, didn’t want to see anybody. Stopped showering. Wouldn’t come out of the bedroom. Just complete—almost complete and utter shutdown. And, um … So she says to me, “You need to get help. You need to—” So … took me a long time, um, and I eventually found a guy who, who I could work with and, and open up to. And, um, that journey took me … right through to the middle of last year. And, for the best part of a year, I, my first thought in waking up every morning is: “I want to be dead. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to feel like this. I don’t know why I feel like this. Don’t know what to do about it.” Somebody said, “Pull yourself together … (chuckles)”
Paul: “Don’t you think I’m trying (chuckles)?!”
Jake: (Chuckles) It was awful. It was … there was so—the only thing that, that kind of saved me was somewhere way in the back of my head, there was a wee voice that kept saying, “The way you're thinking is only because you're irrational. So there was a rational part of my mind that kept saying, “Yeah, ok. The pain that you're in now is overwhelming; it’s unbearable. You want to kill yourself. You wake up every morning; ‘Why the fuck am I still here?! Why didn’t I just die in my sleep.’” It awful, and you're fucking … you're torn every which way by, um … “What would happen to the family? What would …” So, it’s madness! So I went through that, really, um, dark, dark period. And, uh, I come out the other side of it, um, and I’m much more a relaxed person (chuckles) than, than I was—
Paul: And talking about what you were going through helped?
Jake: Oh, oh enormously! Enormously. The, uh … uh—I cried constantly during sessions. And … they guy that was there … I would say things—he would say, “But describe to me how you felt?” And it was only then that I realized that I didn’t feel. I was almost an automatum. So, I was functioning, but I wasn’t feeling. You know, he would say to me, “Ok, so you doing … you're describing me doing this. “ He says, “I’m sitting here horrified even thinking about it. How did you feel?” And I said, “Well, it was just what you had to do.” He said, “No, it wasn’t what you just had to do. It was abnormal.” You know … So, again and again, and he, um … he literally, he started—I supposed it worked in a way, too, because he … he, um … He was a very insightful guy. And he was able to, um … He said to me right at the start: “Look, I want you to read this book,” because he, he knew that I read a lot. And, he says, “Just, just try.” I says, “I haven’t been able to read for … first time I’ve lifted a book.” I haven’t devoured book. But he recommended Dante’s Inferno. So he said … “The journey you're starting here now,” he says, “you're going to have to go down through purgatory and to hell before you can come back up. And that going to be painful.” He says … so, um, that’s what he did. And I deliberately chose to pay for it—you can get counseling on, on national health. But I said to myself: “If I go in to free counseling, there’s no incentive to come out of it.” Whereas if I’m paying for it, it’s costing me money. And I have, at least, that incentive to get out of it. So, I was afraid that counseling would just become … a dependency that you would never really deal with your issues. They would just keep … if something was painful to deal with—
Paul: Oh, you just keep putting off the, the painful stuff—
Jake: Putting off the painful stuff.
Paul: I got you.
Jake: And just let it drift away into the distance. Whereas, if you're paying for it,—
Paul: You're gonna be efficient.
Jake: You're gonna be efficient (laughs).
Paul: Yeah, that makes sense.
Jake: Well, that’s the, that’s the way I am.
Paul: Yeah, so being frugal paid off.
Jake: Yeah! (Laughs)
Paul: Being frugal saved your life.
Jake: (Laughs) Yeah, it did! It did, indeed. (Paul laughs) That’s it.
Paul: Thank you so much for, uh, for sharing all this stuff. (Pauses) Is there anything that you'd like to say before, before we wrap up?
Jake: Yeah. Always look on the bright side of life. (Both laugh.)
Paul: One of my favorite songs from—
Jake: (unintelligible) If life seems pretty rotten … it’s a brilliant song, but it’s a philosophy!
Paul: It really is. For people who’ve never seen the movie, uh, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, it’s one of the best movies ever—
Jake: Of all time.
Paul: —ever made. And, the scene, where the difference between the Catholic house and the Protestant house … oh my god! Laugh out loud. Laugh out loud funny—
Jake: (Laughs) Brilliant!
Paul: Yes, yeah.
Jake: But, I mean … not that I would say that—I mean, doesn’t matter how bad it gets … it always gets better.
Paul: Yeah. If, if we just keep moving our feet forward and—
Jake: That’s it.
Paul: —and, and don’t give up.
Jake: Every journey begins with a one wee step (laughs).
Paul: Yeah, yeah, uh huh. (Says something in Irish)
Jake: (Responds in Irish). I was, um, (Says something in Irish) Anyone out there listening to this who, who’s a Gaelic speaker, at any point in the future, don’t forget: Keep her lit. (Laughs.)
Paul: (Laughs)
__________________________
[01:40:54] Many, many thanks to, to Jake, and (clears throat) again to Michael Corr, who helped set up this interview. He, uh, put me in touch with Jake. And, Michael’s interview is great as well; that’s from a couple of, uh, couple of weeks back.
[01:41:10 ] Before I take it out with, uh, half dozen surveys, um, want to remind you there’s a couple of different ways to support the show, if you feel so inclined. You could do it financially or non-financially, but we desperately need your help. This, this show (chuckles) cannot, uh, continue on people just merely thinking it’s a great show. Any way you can help out be great. So, uh, under the show notes of every episode is a list of ways you can help financially or non-financially, and one simple way is to subscribe. Hit the subscribe button and … that would be awesome. And spread the word through social media.
[01:41:57] Wanna give some love to, uh, Betterhelp.com; they're an online counseling provider. I use ‘em; I love ‘em. If you’ve never tried online counseling, uh, you should really try it. There’s something really nice about waking up, rolling out of bed, going to your computer and doing your therapy session for the day. Don’t have to get in the car, don’t have to look for parking, uh … I life it. I LIFE it?! I like it. I like it and I love it. So, go to betterhelp.com/mental, uh, fill out a questionnaire and they’ll match you with a betterhelp.com counselor and you can experience a free week of counseling to see if it’s right for you. You need to be over 18.
[01:42:41] This is a shame and secret survey filled out by, uh, a gender-fluid person who calls themself, uh, “Stephanie.” They are bi-sexual, in their 20s, raised in a totally chaotic environment. They … have you ever been sexually abused? “Some stuff happened, but I don’t know if it counts. Once, my alcoholic dad and I were sharing a bed—a futon on the floor of my room. When I was around 12, because he got kicked out of his room—I knew he and my mom had been fighting about him being drunk—but he fell asleep and left the TV on. So I took advantage of getting to stay up later than usual and watched the wonderful world, world of Disney. At one point in his sleep, my dad rolled over and moved to put his arm around me. I rarely received attention or affection from my dad, so I moved in closer to cuddle him back. But his arm kept running down my back and into my underwear. And he kind of cupped/squeezed my bum and pressed his hard-on into my leg. I immediately knew that it didn’t feel right or good, and I was afraid and confused. He moved to take off his pants and I jumped up off the futon and made sure he was awake by telling him I had had a nightmare. He looked confused and like he didn’t know where he was when he woke up, and quickly covered himself and ran to the bathroom. He came back and slept the rest of the night on the futon and I slept in the living room.” You know, no matter what your father—whether that was intentional or not—that’s so fucking traumatizing. Let’s see: Stephanie has also been, uh, physically abused and emotionally abused. “There will be books about it someday, I assure you. I just don’t know (Paul chuckles) where to start.” Darkest thoughts: “As an infant, toddler, care provider, and survivor of abuse, there’ve been times when, in frustration, I can understand the power my parents must have felt abusing me and my younger siblings. I think of things that have happened to me and have recurring intrusive thoughts in which I am the abuser hurting someone else. I can’t imagine I would ever let myself hurt a child, or any one. But I can see how easy it is to give into that anger when you have a family legacy of physical abuse, and you never learned healthy coping mechanisms. Many years of therapy have taught me enough to trust that these deep, dark thoughts are there for a reason, but are not necessarily foreshadowing anything in my future.” Darkest secrets: “I love my boyfriend and am committed to our partnership and building our future together. But I’ve thought about leaving or ending things every day since we’ve been together. It’s like a compulsion. I can’t think about how much I love him without also thinking about whether I might be happier without him.” And it’s one of the reasons why I wanted to read your survey, is because, um, I dunno know if there is … an answer to that, but I have a feeling that there won’t be an answer to that until you process the stuff where your intimacy was, you know, violated or, or, uh, you know, given, given a wound, uh, when you were 12 years old. Because that, that—those kinds of things, when a parent crosses a boundary like that—intentional or not—it leaves a mark on us that can often make it really, really hard to let people get close to us. So, that might be something worth, um, exploring in therapy or, you know, maybe joint counseling with your, with your boyfriend. I dunno, but I just wanted to, to share that. And Ialso wanted to, to talk about this, the sexual fantasies. What sexual fantasies are most powerful to you? “Impregnation fantasies. Particularly being impregnated by a Black man. I think about it almost every time I get off. I can’t put my finger on how it makes me feel. Like I don’t think it’s inherently racist, but it’s certainly shitty to be fetishizing Black men. It makes it hard to discern, though, when I have had Black partners who were the vice to my versa in that regard. But I wasn’t with them because they were Black, so I guess that’s where the line is.” And, I just want to say, yeah—that’s … it’s not what we think or feel; it’s what we, what we do with it. What, if anything, would you like to say to someone you haven’t been able to? “Matt, it doesn’t count as a serenade if it’s just five hours of me watching you self-indulge (Paul laughs).” That might be my favorite sentence ever (laughs). It is SO easy to visualize Matt … (laughs) is just … really, really struggling have an accurate, accurate perspective on himself. WHO … (stumbles on word) I don’t want to be serenaded by Bob Dylan for five hours … let alone Matt! She writes: “I was too nice to tell him that to his face; we were so good on paper!” And, and, you know, in my opinion, that being … too afraid to say, “Hey, we’re in hour five of your off-key singing—” not that you had to tell him it was off-key—that’s related to not having that bond, I think, with a parent; not having that, that trust, not being able to be your authentic self and express your needs. So, you know … we tend to shut down and not say what it is that we’re feeling or that we need. What, if anything, do you wish for? “I just hope I don’t die before I’ve stopped wanting to die.” That is so beautifully dark and poetic … I mean, I don’t think anybody would wear that as a T-shirt, but it should be! ‘I hope I don’t die before I stop wanting to die.’ Wow! I am so stealing that, and, and passing that off as my own. Thank you for your survey; it’s, it’s, um … (long pause) It’s just, um … Well, I want to read this. How do you feel after writing these things down? “I’ve been meaning to for a while. I’m glad I went with the stream of consciousness honesty and didn’t get caught up in flowery language or try to upsell myself.” Thank you. Cuz sometimes I do get put off by flowery language when it feels like somebody’s, somebody is, is trying to be published, you know, while they're filling out a survey. I sometimes get that with the Happy Moments, and I know the person filling it out is coming from a good place. But, I've always … I dunno, when something’s a little precious and new-agey, um, uh, it, uh … makes me kind of pull a-, pull away a little bit. But, uh, I appreciate you not going all, all flowery.
[01:50:36] This is a shame and secret survey filled out by a guy who calls himself “No Humor, No Hummer.” (Chuckles.) He is, I believe he’s 30? Yeah, he’s … somewhere between 21 and 30. Raised in a slightly dysfunctional environment; identifies as straight. Never been sexually abused, uh, and underneath that he writes: “Shit, at this point, I almost wish I had been abused. Keep reading.” He’s been emotionally abused: “Let’s just start with the crux of my problem. I’m 30 years old, living a painfully bland existence, and I'm still a virgin. I've never had a date, haven’t even kissed a member of the opposite sex. I’m not really bad looking. My problems aren’t that I’ve lived through wars or that I was beaten bloody when I was younger. My problems stem from just being ignored all my life. I know— despite the fact that I’m painfully normal with a painfully normal past—that I have major problems dealing with life and the things it’s thrown at me so far.” And I just want to say, I think a better word is common. Because to be emotionally ignored growing up is not normal; it’s co-, it’s common, sadly. But, it’s abnormal, at least in terms of what, what a kid needs and what how a childhood should be. Um, unless you’re Charles Dickens. “I just recently realized that you don’t need a fucked up family life to have major mental issues. Ok, maybe you need just a tiny bit of a fucked up family life for that to happen. Kind of goes hand in hand with mental problems, right? I’m just a socially awkward, normal-looking nerd that hides a crushing secret that shames me to my core every day because I’m too neurotic to muscle through the social pain that it would cause me to get laid. And because I’m 30 years old, I shame myself into thinking that I’ve missed my best ‘before date,’ and will just get further trauma from those inevitably awkward social interactions.” Um … “—thinking I’ve missed my best ‘before date’” Oh! My best “before date,” like best if used before. I thought, uh, he meant date like as in a date with a person. And, so it continues: “I just recently found out I have borderline personality disorder. I had a seemingly normal childhood, but my mother was both over protective of me, but also emotionally distant … for the first part of my life, but started being a lot more mindful in her last three to five years, when she was battling with cancer. My father was both physically and emotionally distant for most of my childhood—” And, by the way, having a parent die of cancer is a pretty big fucking trauma. Continuing: “My father was both physically and emotionally distant for most of my childhood, so I believe I imprinted the role of a father figure onto my older brother, who was a covert narcissist. My family was always well-meaning, except for my brother. And that caused my mental problems never to tip into an obvious ‘Yeah, you need help’ kind of situation. I honestly wish my problems had been worse so I could have gotten help sooner.” I just want to assure you that what you are experiencing is so common and so many people shame themselves for not coping better with, with this. And it’s one of the reasons why I wanted to read your survey. Because this is important. This is … so many people struggle with this feeling that my, my wounds aren’t deep enough for me to feel the pain I feel, or to be as fucked up as I feel, or to be making the bad decisions I’m making. So, continuing: “Having been both emotionally abused by my smothering, smotheringly attention-seeking brother, as well as having an over-protective mother—”And I would love to know, too, what’s … (stumbles on words) what you mean specifically by that. Because, you know, um, very often we will assign a label to, to something that, if you didn’t investigate it, it sounds innocuous. But, uh, you know, or annoying. But, sometimes, until you open up to somebody about it, like a therapist, you don’t realize that it might be actually traumatic. “I turned into an overly-timid and shy person. I never got any of my feelings validated. I never developed a personality or sense of self because I just never found out what I liked. But I always did what my brother did in order to impress him or make him like me. I don’t need to tell you how that turned out. I got bullied in school, missed boatloads of opportunities for all sorts of social opportunities, missed truckloads of signs from girls that were genuinely interested in me, but I just locked up from the thought of talking to them and avoided them all together. I’m an avoider.” You know, and that, to me, is the most important sentence in this whole thing: is that THAT has been the coping mechanism. And talking about—focusing on the, still being a virgin at 30, is, you know, um, it’s, it’s … You’re, you're getting ahead of yourself. Because to truly have intimacy … there needs to be an ability to communicate, unless you're just talking about going out and, you know, um, kind of having … just sporting sex, uh, with no feelings attached. And, um … (pause) you know, I do-, I don’t want to sound old fashion, where you don’t really care about (chuckles) the other person (chuckles). Really no other way around saying that, because essentially that’s kind of what it is, is you’re just kind of, uh, you're agreeing to use each other, uh, which is … In my experience, while it may be sexually stimulating, it’s ultimately unfulfilling, um, if we’re looking for intimacy in, in our lives. Which it sounds like you really want. So … I’m gonna just fast forward, uh, a bit. “Only in the last two years did I finally shed my protective shell that was holding me back pretty much…” uh, “… holding back pretty much every emotion I had felt since puberty. It’s been too overwhelming to put into words, and I'm barely hanging in there, especially since I have no emotional support to guide me through it, except for myself. The weight of it all has almost crushed me too many times to count. I started using a testosterone-boosting supplement that kick-started my metabolism. Recovery processing gave me enough physical and mental energy to finally talk to people long enough to realize I have BPD, and that my brother is a narcissistic asshole that I’ve now shut out of my life. I still don’t understand what it is that’s keeping me on this plane of existence, but there is some fundamental force that’s telling me to just muscle through the pain. Or maybe it’s just my dick telling me that the pussy is just around the corner; I just have to stick around a little longer for it to show itself.” I'm not gonna … (stumbles on words) I don’t want to shame you here for, for that last past. But, but that, to me, is—there's a really kind of objectifying attitude in that, in that sentence. You know, um, you know saying “the pussy” and calling it “it.” Because there's a, there's a person attached to that vagina. And … (pause) trying to … trying to get satisfaction from the vagina without visiting the person with the vagina is kind of, uh … (long pause) It is a very, very difficult, long-term goal. And, uh, not only is, are you not doing yourself a service; it’s not very nice to the people that you're doing it with, um, unless there's a tremendous amount of transparency up front with the two of you, and you agree upon what the, you know, the rules are and the boundaries and all that other stuff. But, I, I think it’s pretty rare that that happens. And, don’t mistake this for me shaming you or putting you down because I was that guy for a long time. A, a SHAMEFULLY long time. So, I’m speaking from some personal experience of being blind to the fact that I couldn’t see that I was a pig, or I was objectifying, or, um, uh … I had hurt, that I had hurt people. That I had hurt women. And that I was also robbing myself of intimacy, because I was afraid to be vulnerable and I didn’t have the tools to ask for it, because I didn’t even know what the fuck I was feeling. Cuz I was just distracting myself with, with shit. Darkest thoughts: “My darkest secret is that I’m so fucking boring, that I’m way too nice for my thoughts to become too fucked up. I guess that’s been what has steadied me all these years. I have a strong, self-correction mechanism in my thoughts and morality that keeps me relatively grounded mentally.” (Long pause) Yeah, like, for instance here, he writes, “Yeah, sure, when I see the asses of some—” Oh, all right, I, uh … “I mean, sure, when I see the asses of some of the girls I work with, in what has to be the finest fashion development in recent years—yoga pants—I just want to drag them to the bathroom, rip their clothes off, and fuck them so hard against the wall that they scream. But when it all comes down to it, I just want to talk to someone that understands me.” You know, you, you might have … unconsciously distilled the “me too” movement right, right there. If, if we could get people who are afraid of intimacy and are filled with anger and—I’m not saying entitlement in your, in your case, but, in a lot of men, and it used to be my case. If we could find a way … to help them achieve intimacy, maybe there wouldn’t—and I could be wrong. But maybe there wouldn’t be an epidemic of sex being used to dominate or humiliate an unconsenting person. I mean, this, this is so touching what you write here: “My most shameful secret is that I’m beyond the point of wanting sex. I just want to lie in bed with someone and hug them and cry until I fall asleep. I just want to find the same comfort that my mother showed me when I was a baby.” (Long pause) I’m really glad that you, you filled this out. (Long pause) You know, in, instead of focusing on the getting laid and getting rid of the virgin, uh, status … my hope for you is that you begin to seek out a support network of emotionally healthy people or the very least people also searching to become more emotionally healthy, so that you can learn human connection and self-care instead of distracting yourself from the pain or becoming embittered or hopeless. And that’s probably going to involve going to a support group or therapy or, um, pursuits where, uh, you will need to interact with women platonically and get to know them and have sex not be on the, on the table so that you can, you know … get to know the person that … is (chuckles) transporting “the vagina” that you seem, you know, to be focused on. And, and again, I’m not trying to shame you. You know, there's a certain genetic component to thinking about, you know, vaginas or cocks or whatever it is that people fantasize about. But it’s, it’s what we do with those impulses of thoughts that, that matters. And, um, you know, being horny and thinking sexual thoughts can be a totally healthy thing, but it’s what is, what is it that we’re trying to get ultimately. And, hopefully, it’s human connection and maybe some love and give and take and communication. And I, I—the last thing I want to say is: In my experience—cuz I had to work fucking hard to get to the place where I am now or I feel like this is what I want. I’ve been going on some Bumble dates, and, you know, I haven’t really done much beyond afternoon coffees. But, it’s nice getting to know … the woman, in case it does go to something more than that. And, because I want to feel something more than a thrill of her taking her clothes off and, you know, having the experience of sex. And, what I want to say is, I had to put a lot of work into getting to the place where I don’t have all my walls up and I just want to use people. And most growth is in doing the stuff that we don’t want to do to grow, cuz the pain is not yet greater than the fear of trying something new. And, for me, the pain, the loneliness … of not being able to be intimate with people—both romantically and platonically—that had to become bigger than my fear of going and asking for help to say, “I don’t know how to do this intimacy thing. I don’t know how to get out of my head when I’m having sex. I don’t know how to let go and trust. I don’t know how to feel safe.” You know, not like I’m gonna be beat up, but like, like I can relax. And not be anxious. So, I hope that makes, I hope that makes sense.
[02:07:37] And then, finally, I want to read, uh, uh, a happy moment. And thank you for, for filling that out. You know, you, you, um—whether consciously or not—you brought to the surface some really fucking important subject matter. And, and some attitudes and some fears that I think are driving a lot of the dysfunction that is happening in our country and around the world: in childhood, in adolescence, and in adulthood. And it’s ALL fucking related. It doesn’t just begin somewhere with one person in one time period of their lives. This is … abuse that you see going on right now, might be a ripple from something that happened 400 years ago. Which is also one of the reasons why I get so fucking incensed when people are like, “Slavery is over with. Why are, why are they still complaining about it?!” (Chuckles) Oh my god. And finally this is a happy moment filled out by, um, a woman who calls herself “Finally Full,” and she writes: “Today, I cooked a real dinner for myself and ate it, too. I struggle with depression and for several years have had nausea when I’m stre—” I don’t know WHY I pronounced “naw-zha”; I have never pronounced it “naw-zha.” I just made myself “naw-cee-oos.” (Laughs) “For several years, I’ve had nausea—” (Laughs) Why? “Naw-see-ah?” WOW! It was going okay ‘til now! “I struggle with depression and for several years have had nausea when I’m stressed that makes food seem impossible. Last week, I finally talked to my therapist about it, and we talked about why I feel like I don’t deserve to eat and use food as a last-ditch attempt to control with other stressors. I don’t know how, but tonight I felt hungry for the first time in a while and went to the store, cooked, and ate a full-balanced dinner and wasn’t nauseated at all. I know this is a small, I know this is small, and there’s more ground to cover. But I finally have hope that this could be the direction I take going forward.” YES! YES! THIS is a PERFECT example of what recovery looks like! It’s just stringing together moment after moment after moment like that. And not tripping out about what the future holds. Just little baby steps, and before we know it, we’re, we’ve developed muscles that can help us deal with all kinds of shit that used to overwhelm us or fill us with shame or make us feel totally hopefully. And it starts with little things like that. And I love that that came after the previous survey, because that is the road out of the tough part of being stuck and feeling lonely. Self-care: it’s so huge!
[02:11:02] I hope you enjoyed this, this, uh, episode and these surveys. And … if you're out there and you are saying to yourself … “My situation, my life isn’t bad enough for me to feel bad, to not feel good,” stop it. Stop it right now and just go into the feelings that you're feeling and talk about ‘em. Cuz it doesn’t matter, this isn’t a contest. Don’t piss half your life away—or your whole life away—minimizing what you're feeling. And BLAMING yourself for what you feel. It’s what we do with those feelings that matter, and getting into a solution and asking for help has been the greatest and scariest decision I ever made. And now I get to do this show and stumble through surveys and mispronounce nausea and be a pompous buffoon. And isn’t that what we all want: to be a stumbling pompous buffoon? (Chuckles.) Just never forget, you're not alone, and thanks for listening.
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