Two weeks ago, I received my Autumn physics exams results. I am happy to report that your boy bagged an A; thus concluding the whole A-level predicament. Alhamdulillah!
The stress plaguing me these last few months has finally been lifted from my shoulders, leaving room for the next load of stress that life’s going to throw at me. And so, it is in this moment of respite that I can sit back, relax, and reflect for a minute.
This past year has been a rough one. I’m sure you’re more than acquainted with why that’s the case. The way I see it, my life has been on pause since March. Unlike most of my peers, I did not start university this year, so I’ve virtually been stuck at home these last nine months.
During this time, I’ve learned things about myself as I’m sure you have as well. The key thing I have learned – the subject of this post – is that I’m not able to cope with loneliness as well as I used to. To understand why we must delve into my past. That’s right. It’s time for my ORIGIN STORY!
In primary school, I was very much a loner. I struggled a lot with making friends because my interests were very different from my peers. I wasn’t into sports. To this day, I’ve yet to sit down and watch an entire ninety-minute football match. Considering I’ve lived my whole life in England, this is borderline blasphemy. The most I do is watch cricket when its India vs Pakistan but that’s more for the culture than anything else.
Neither did I have Cartoon Network or Disney XD, like the other kids, so I couldn’t relate to any of the shows they talked about. Even during playtime, I used to prefer staying in class playing with Lego, drawing, or reading than outside playing with the other kids. I was a bit of an oddball.
This isn’t to say I was sad, I was actually pleased to spend my playtimes alone because as far as I was concerned playing with Lego was way more fun than playing football. Nonetheless, the result was that I was very socially awkward and only had a tiny group of friends.
When I started secondary, I lacked the social skills that my peers had. My few friends from primary had started at different schools. So I was alone without the skills needed to make new friends. This meant that for much of my secondary school career, I was a social outcast. It also didn’t help that my school was set up in a very odd way.
My school had four houses (we called them Ties because we were differentiated by our ties’ colour). I was in Green Tie. Coincidently, I was also in Green House in primary school and Wilberforce House (also denoted by the colour green) in Sixth Form. I guess the magical sorting hat known as fate decided that I was a Slytherin at heart despite my inclination to the unseriousness of Hufflepuff.
These four houses were then divided into two bands: X and Y. In the X band you had Red and Blue Tie students, and in the Y band you had Green and Yellow Tie students. For the first two years of school, our classes were determined by our band. This meant that you didn’t even get a real chance to socialise with half your year group, thus limiting your potential pool of candidates for friendship. From year 9 to 11, the bands were finally mixed for our optional classes, but by that time, secondary school’s social circles were set in stone, and I was left adrift.
I did make one friend in year 7, though. He was an immigrant from Bangladesh – something I was surprised to find out given he spoke with an almost Canadian-like accent – and had just started school in the UK. We used to spend our break times playing Pokémon cards or discussing video games. Unfortunately, this friendship wouldn’t last long due to a very stupid yet humorous sequence of events.
This friend and I would often be singled out and picked on due to our different interests. It also didn’t help that we were both brown and Muslim. The other kids used to call him “Big Aqil” because he was taller than me at the time. One day, we were leaving through the school gates when another student started verbally abusing us. My friend decided that he had enough and began to swing for the bully.
I would now like to take a pause in this story to deliver a PSA on punching techniques. When you deliver a punch, there’s a particular technique you must follow to maximise damage done to your opponent while minimising damage dealt to you.
The first, and arguably most important, step is to make a fist. Now a lot of people surprisingly get this wrong and end up injuring themselves so listen up. To make a fist, you must first open your hand, stretching out your fingers and thumb. Then curl in your fingers at which point you’ll be left with a thumbs up. Your thumb is then secured onto the outside of the middle phalanges of your fingers.
Many people end up connecting their thumb to the proximal phalanx of their index finger or, even worse, underneath their fingers. This will inevitably lead to a broken thumb when you land a punch, so please don’t do it. Your wrist must be kept straight at all times. This ensures that the fist is reinforced allowing you to put more power behind your punch.
The second step is to get into your resting stance. Different martial arts have slightly different stance variations for different reasons. Muay Thai fighters like to keep their arms highs with their elbows flared out and shoulders square-on to allow for easier elbow strikes and kicks. But for the purpose of this post, we will be looking at the traditional boxing stance.
Tuck in your chin by slightly lowering your head and place your fists in front – not too far and not too close. Your elbows should be kept close to your sides to defend your ribcage. Your legs should be kept apart with your less dominant side at the front and a slight bend in the knees. Your shoulders should face your opponent side-on with your less dominant side in front.
For example, if you are right-handed, your left leg should be in front with your left shoulder angled towards your opponent. To keep things simple, we’ll assume everyone is right-handed – sorry left-handed folks. Whenever you’re not throwing a punch, you should be in this position. All punches start and end here.
Now we move onto the actual punches. There are different types of punches, such as hooks and uppercuts, but we will just be looking at a basic jab and cross to keep this post short.
To throw a jab, simply rotate your waist clockwise. As you do this, extend your left arm rapidly outwards, leading with your fist in a straight line towards your opponent. Your jab should be shoulder height, so don’t aim too high or too low; aim straight ahead. Of course, if your opponent is a different height to you then adjust accordingly. Once your arm is fully extended, it should immediately be brought back into the rest position.
Similarly, to throw a cross, rotate your waist anti-clockwise extending your right arm. As before, do not aim too high or too low. However, this time you should also pivot your back foot to get more power behind the punch. Once again, the arm should immediately be brought back to the rest position once fully extended.
The aim is to hit your opponent hard and fast with your knuckles. Think of yourself as an oscillating system. Equilibrium is the rest position with the peaks and troughs being your jabs and crosses. At no point should one of your arms be left sticking out.
Before we get back to the story, I’d like to cover a few things to keep an eye out for. If your unsure whether your opponent is in range just throw a jab. Your jab is your measuring tool so use it wisely. If you find you are out of range then simply move closer to your opponent. Don’t overextend your punches lest you be punished with a volley of punches throwing you off balance. Your legs should be providing a stable base at all times. As a general rule: Move your legs first before you move your arms. Fleet footwork is key.
It is imperative that you keep your knuckles in line with your forearm and wrist. This is because you will be hitting your opponent with them and so it’s a good idea to keep them reinforced otherwise you risk injuring yourself. Lastly, do not flare out your elbows when you punch. Remember the punch is lead by the fist, so you do not need to raise your elbows out to the side before extending your arm. The punch should be a fluid straight-line motion.
When my friend swung for the bully, he ignored all of the rules mentioned above. Instead, he decided that he’d like to charge up his punch by swinging his arm all the way behind him before going for the bully. Unfortunately, I was standing behind him. It didn’t end well.
A few moments later, I woke up in the medical room. My friend was standing by the door; the colour drained from his face. I was more embarrassed than I was angry at him. Within a few days, word had travelled around the school, and kids began taunting me, but the worst part of it all was that my father was picking me up that day. He had brought me some wings and chips from my favourite chicken shop, and by the time I left the medical room, they were cold. After this, I stopped talking to my friend; the embarrassment was too much. He was also in Red Tie, so I didn’t have any classes with him until year 9 making it easier to avoid him.
For the next few years, I just drifted between different social groups, never really part of any of them. In almost all of them, I was ridiculed for my differences in the name of banter. Kids would talk about me behind my back, and I was rarely invited to hang out outside of school. More often than not, people would tear me down than build me up. At the time, I didn’t think this was a problem because I had just assumed that this is what fitting in was supposed to be like. This, of course, destroyed a lot of my already dwindling self-confidence.
On the flip side, when you don’t have a lot going for you socially, you find it a lot easier to spend time by yourself. I would spend a lot of my free time playing video games to the point that I was clocking 30 hours a week on Team Fortress 2. Other than video games, I would also read a lot of comic books. Loneliness wasn’t a significant concern for me because I had resigned myself to the fact that kids were just naturally unkind. The time I spent alone was way more fun and emotionally fulfilling than the time I spent with others.
Luckily, by the end of year 11, I reconnected with my friend from year 7. Things were awkward at first but seeing as we were going to be starting at the same Sixth Form, it seemed appropriate that we just forget about the past. Through him, I met two other students from X band that were also going to the same Sixth Form.
On the whole, my secondary school experience was pretty bad socially. I would often pretend to be ill to avoid going into school. However, academically it was going very well. I would usually rank amongst the top of my class and was the first student to sit the GCSE further maths exam. When you didn’t have friends, you’d have a lot more focus in class. And while I did meet some decent people in secondary school, I wouldn’t call them friends per se save for the three that joined me in Sixth Form.
It wasn’t until I took part in the National Citizen Service (NCS) when I fully came out of my shell. For those unaware, NCS is a four-week program where teenagers get together and participate in activities before undertaking a project for their local community. It’s not mandatory but is highly encouraged by schools. Nearly everyone I’ve talked to said their wave was quote “dead” – meaning dull – so my wave (Bromley Wave 8) was certainly an anomaly.
For the first time, I was surrounded by genuinely kind people. Before this, I was often greeted with animosity by my peers. Instead, at NCS, people celebrated me and my differences. People built me up instead of tearing me down, giving me a much-needed confidence boost. I will forever remain grateful to those I met at NCS for giving me the chance to socially thrive and come out of my shell. They essentially changed me from a bitter introvert sceptical of others to an enthusiastic extrovert who actively goes out of his way to meet new people.
With my new found confidence, I was able to socially thrive in Sixth Form. I made a lot of friends from different walks of life. I took part in social events; something I would’ve never dreamed of at secondary. I also grew very close with my friend who knocked me out in year 7, to the point I consider him my brother. The truth is, I feel as though I found my community in Sixth Form. And by finding my community, I ultimately found myself.
Unfortunately, too much of a good thing can be harmful. I had essentially become dependent on social interaction with others. This meant that when lockdown started, I had a lot of adjusting to do. Without my community, I struggled a lot, which brings us back to the whole point of this post. I can’t cope with loneliness as well as I used to.
When the lockdowns first started, I found myself with a lot of free time but hardly anything to do. Physically cut off from my peers, I began to miss the little things. The ramblings we used to have on our train journeys. The daily shenanigans we got up to in room 10 – our weekly games of Cards Against Humanity. The philosophical discussions I used to have in the canteen during my free periods. The chicken and beef burgers I used to get from Wrap City located just outside Victoria Station (Highly recommend). All of this was brought to an abrupt end on the 20th March.
I needed things to occupy myself with at home, so I took up reading more seriously – something I’d begun to neglect. I even revisited comics again, which I had stopped reading in year 12. My video game consumption ultimately skyrocketed yet again. Anything to keep me occupied lest my mind wanders to unpleasant places. I also took up writing which culminated in the establishment of this very blog. That being said, I still missed my friends greatly and yearned for social interaction. There is only so much time one can spend cooped up with family before going insane.
This feeling of loneliness was new to me. As mentioned before, prior to NCS, I had learned to enjoy the time I spent alone. In many ways, I was my own best friend. Since NCS, if I ever felt lonely, I could just meet up with friends. With the new lockdown restrictions, this was impossible. Lockdown was the introvert’s paradise, yet I was no longer an introvert.
Fortunately, thanks to the wonders of technology, I could still communicate with my friends via social media. Had social media not existed, I’m sure I would have gone insane. Then again, one could make the convincing argument that it is social media itself that is driving us insane. Alas, that is a topic for another day.
With one of my friendship groups, which we dub “Brown Society” due to the majority of members being of South Asian descent, we began hosting weekly intellectual discussions. Our very own Oxford Union, you could say. This eventually evolved into weekly games of Among Us. Unfortunately, these discussions and gaming sessions only lasted a few months as everyone was slowly preparing for their new lives at university – something I’ve yet to experience.
As sad as it may be, I need to come to terms with the fact that people are moving on with their lives and I should too. The friendships that are meant to last will do so and those that aren’t, won’t. The sense of community I felt at Sixth Form is gone and, from what I’ve heard from my peers at university, it probably won’t ever come back. I’ll try my best to hold onto the friendships I’ve forged these past three years. Still, I must also remember that people outgrow each other and move onto greater things – ‘tis natural.
And so I venture into 2021, with the acceptance that, for better or for worse, things will never be the same again. Happy new year to all those reading, I hope you all fulfil your ambitions for the next year. For myself, I hope to come to terms with this new feeling of loneliness. Perhaps maybe reach an equilibrium between my current extroverted and past introverted selves.
That’s it from me this year. See y’all in 2021!
Peace be with you.
Aqil Ghani 