I’ve really struggled with getting this newsletter done. Eagle-eyed observers will see I’m way, way past my self-imposed fortnightly deadline. My last edition was so vulnerable, returning to the newsletter has felt like picking at an old scab.
But I think I’m also feeling vulnerable right now because lockdown rules here in the UK are beginning to ease.
As of this week, pubs and shops reopen, but, more importantly for us in the fighting community, gyms have reopened. We’re finally getting those rounds in, getting access to the weights we need for fight conditioning and the heavy bags we’ve been itching to kick and punch for months. Further down the line, British fighters are finally starting to get dates for home shows - ones which we’re hoping will stick this time.
It goes without saying I don’t feel any of this is set in stone. A third wave is gripping Europe thanks to a strain which started here. As far away as Thailand is, hearing their stadiums are closing once again because of the UK variant feels ominous.
I feel nervous calling this the end of lockdown for all the above reasons, but with more and more of my friends getting vaccinated, something feels like it’s shifting in the right direction.
This is all good news, right? I know I should feel relieved at a return to some semblance of normality, but a heaviness has sat on my chest for weeks as the days counted down on the government’s fêted roadmap. It absolutely isn’t that I’ve enjoyed lockdown at all. I had my second lockdown birthday last week, marking a wasted, traumatising year marred by loss and loneliness.
But the last time rules loosened, I found myself at my lowest point.
As some already know, I spent that first lockdown entirely alone. All of my flatmates had either fled to their parents’ or to their partners’, leaving me plodding around my house, baking sourdough, doing loud zoom calls and making a lot of banana bread. Your classic lockdown one vibes.
What I didn’t anticipate was how unhinged being alone would make me. All the WhatsApp groups and Zoom calls in the world just couldn’t touch the anxiety of solitude which steadily grew over the early months of the British lockdown.
You’d think, when things opened up a little, there would be some relief. Through the lens of Instagram, it felt like everyone else was getting back to some semblance of normal except for me. When the majority of your interactions with other people are virtual, you assume everyone is having a way better time than you are - even though we know social media is a curated feed of people’s best moments.
I’m still working through a lot of this (hello, therapy), but it left me in a very dark place. I’ve seen a few people this week tweet about how they feel very alone because they aren’t the ones posting happy pictures from beer gardens - if you’re one of those people, I understand how you feel!
What I’ve found when I’ve talked about this on and off is people who have also dug through the pandemic alone understood immediately. Some of those who did not, either because they had partners or flatmates to count on, struggled to get it, some to the point of indifference. Such indifference extends into government policy, which time and time again has put the nuclear family unit first in their policy-making.
There’s something jarring and unnerving about the swing from complete solitude to even a fraction of normality, especially when everyone else appears to act like everything is fine. If half the people in your life think you’re making a big deal over nothing, how can they see you’re about to break?
For me, that breaking point made me realise I needed to make some big changes in my life. I set about removing myself from toxic situations, moving somewhere I could get a cat and prioritising the friends who make my life better by being in it.
As anxious as I feel in these early days of “freedom”, I’m hoping I’ve changed enough in my circumstances so I don’t implode and end up at the bottom of the barrel again. In that respect, I am incredibly fortunate. I’m healthy, have a great job and some stellar friends who have come through for me time and time again - not everyone is so lucky.
If you have someone in your life who has been alone for a lot of this time, I really encourage you to get in touch, because these next few weeks may well be rough on their psyche. We’re very much not out of the woods yet.
A neuroscientist’s take on the end of lockdown
I wanted to dig in to why these next few weeks out of lockdown may be difficult for some of us, so I asked neuroscientist Dean Burnett to help shed some light. Dean has done a lot of work in this area and has a book out right now called Psycho-Logical: Why Mental Health Goes Wrong – and How to Make Sense of It. Who better to ask why some of our brains might feel a bit broken when everyone seems to be celebrating?
Hey Dean! Thanks so much for chatting. So, why might people be feeling a bit stressed about the prospect of lockdown ending?
A lot of it might stem from the simple factor of going from a situation of known things to the unknown. We can intellectually know that it's much better to be able to have choices and have options and have freedom than be stuck at home, but at the most fundamental level, the one thing which genuinely causes more stress is uncertainty and increased uncertainty.
Yes, lockdown is a pain in the arse, but it does give you more control of your immediate surroundings. It’s quite a shift to go from that to: “Ok, now I can go outside again.” Also, in lockdown, the rules are really clear, social distancing, stay at home, wash your hands - when lockdown “ends”, it’s back to individual responsibility. Some people might want to wash their hands, some people might not bother…
Yes, I remember some of my male friends tweeting they knew it was serious because they saw guys washing their hands in the bathroom and I thought, you what?
As someone who’s a bit of a germaphobe and uses male toilets, it’s never fun.
Oh dear. Away from hand washing, part of it for me was perhaps the FOMO of seeing everyone on Instagram having a great time while I was at home being sad. Is there a heightened element of that now?
Well, if you look across the first six months of the pandemic, we know mental health and mental wellbeing was down - except, by and large teenagers. It’s not that they didn’t have poor mental health, it was that it didn’t get any worse in general. (Note: Dean wrote a book about teenage brains, you can get it here)
There are lots of reasons for this, but one example is the social rejection you feel as a teenager is far more serious because that’s just how your brain works. And that social rejection wasn’t happening, there weren’t any parties, people weren’t gallivanting around and you weren’t missing out.
I personally think the idea you’re not missing out on anything would help with mental wellbeing. With lockdown over, that’s gone. Couple this with the fact we’ve been conditioned to restrict ourselves or quantify our social gatherings - you’re going to get a lot more people who are like: “Oh, well, ten people is a lot, isn’t it?”
What tips do you have for people who might feel a bit anxious in these early weeks of freedom?
Generally, this is a very unique situation none of us have really had to go through so I don’t know if anyone really knows the answer to that. I would say, just based on how things work neurologically as far as we know, I think slow and steady is the best approach, do it gradually.
Even if the government decides in July, right, no more lockdown, all back to normal, you don’t *have* to throw yourself back into your day-to-day routines. Even if people are asking you to. If people were already a bit socially anxious, the pandemic at least gave them an out. We can’t do it, because it’s not allowed. So if you are still very conscious or very nervous about COVID, in lockdown you at least had an excuse. It’s ok to slowly phase, don’t do it all at once so you don’t overwhelm yourself.
Thanks for chatting Dean! Everyone reading this, go buy his new book.
Women could fight in Lumpinee
In fighter land, there’s been some big news from Thailand, as reported by Muay Ying.
Lumpinee is one of the most famous stadiums in Muay Thai history, alongside Rajadamnern. Both ban matches between women - this piece by fighter Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu goes into some of the lore as to why. It’s jarring as a female fighter that this rule exists at all.
It’s not entirely accurate to say women haven’t been able to fight there at all, as some trans women in recent years have been matched against cis men. The linked piece is by Sylvie again, talking about how Angie Petchrungruang’s fight at Lumpinee was important for all women.
This is a change which has been long in the making. Women’s Muay Thai has been getting bigger and bigger, despite a global pandemic, thanks to promotions like One Championship and Muay Thai Superchamp. It’s encouraging to see the shift despite these difficulties. When more women all over the world are allowed to fight once more, who knows where the scene will go next.
Muay Thai goals in MMA
Dakota Ditcheva, a well-established Muay Thai fighter, made her MMA pro debut in a closed door show this week. The sound of those elbows, captured from the side of the cage, is both terrifying and awesome.