Socially isolated adolescence
I didn't think that my inaugural post on TSR would be about this, instead I thought it would be about my political activities or band, but it's really getting to me right now and I feel as though I really need to post this.
I'm 17 and taking A-levels through distance learning. Distance learning was not my choice, and there is a reason behind it that I will get to in the paragraphs that follow.
When I was a young child, I was very hyperactive. I was expelled from my primary school on the grounds of this. I was out of school for a few years. This happened in 2005. I had just moved to a new town.
I was homeschooled for a few years, with tutoring. The children in my neighbourhood were fairly social; I could go outside and make friends. Interscholastic friendships were commonplace; one was from my old primary school, I was homeschooled, and the others went to the primary school in my new town.
I was very nearly accepted into that primary school; I actually don't remember why I wasn't. My mother has claimed that it was due to my alleged inability to take off my coat, though I'm certain I was able to do that at that age.
Moving along a few years, I started my first year at a special needs school for students with autism in 2007. I liked it. I had friends there, though I only saw them outside of school on birthday parties. That's how it continued to be for a few years, as outside of school I would hang around with the friends I had made while homeschooled. However, the one I went to mainstream primary with stopped contacting me as he got into a fight with my best friend. All these years later, he still lives at the same address and hasn't contacted me.
I consider the 2009-2010 academic year the most fun period of my life. It was also the point at which I was my most socially active. I had friends, I had a fun teacher, I loved the culture at the time, the election excited me, I got into politics, I could code, I was seemingly advanced for my age. I frequented youth clubs. I was with friends almost every day. I started to play bass. I was in Year 7.
Things started to show signs of cracking in 2010. My friends moved away. Youth centres seemingly died out. Year 8 began and the friends I had from Year 7 switched schools; I didn't exchange contact details with them, and those from Year 7 who remained, I discovered, found me annoying, though one of them who was also in my class in my first year later became friends with me.
2011, I don't have any friendships outside of school. Nobody visits, everyone lives far away, everyone feels like acquaintances. I spend literally all of my time talking to internet friends I started to make. I became aware of the socially isolated nature of my circumstances; naively, I didn't think that this was because of my school. I thought that the majority of adolescents didn't go to school with their friends, and instead befriended people based more on geographical proximity alone, which I'd later find out is completely false. I also noticed that my school was severely underfunded and lacking in decent resources in comparision to mainstream schools, though this did not start to majorly bother me until years later.
2012, I realised that the majority of friendships are formed in school. I make a Facebook account, and attend birthday parties for the first time since 2008. I successfully hold my first one at the end of that year, though only two friends came. Aside from their birthday parties, which weren't parties in the traditional sense but rather a group of 7 teenagers screaming at an XBox until roughly 9pm, I did not see these people outside of school that year.
2013, I form a band with some of them, and start to hold "gatherings", in which they'd basically come here to burp, laugh at my television and eat my food. The band wrote half a song before I lost the circle through infighting.
2014, I lose the remaining friends I have. Having taken what I view as the wrong side in the band conflict, I was almost hit by a car on the way back to school from a lunch outing. The person whom I viewed as my then best friend overreacted to this. I excommunicated the entirety of my school, abandoning my old Facebook and Skype. I decided to keep in touch with a new circle that had been formed by an old friend after an incident the year prior in which he was ostracised from the common room by the de facto school ring leader, the same person who went ape when I was nearly hit by the car, as he and his girlfriend were throwing a lunchbox around near the Wii. They had been in conflict for a whole academic year exclusively on the grounds of this.
To worsen it, the scenario of my school's academic opportunities began to sink in. At this school, very few students ever take A-levels at college, instead taking Level 2 courses and then going to work. Only one student in the entire school's history has ever studied at university. He was a music student who had private tutoring, and went to a school's sixth form for his A-levels, though allegedly, he did not like it.
To my knowledge, a student in mainstream takes a handful of entry level exams in Year 10 purely as an assessment of aptitude, and perhaps a few higher tier papers, and the rest of their higher tiers in Year 11. Typically, they'll leave a mainstream school with, or the opportunity to have obtained, roughly 11 Level 2 GCSEs.
At this school, a student only takes NOCNs and BTEC Level 1s in Year 11, with some foundation tier GCSEs, and literally nothing in Year 10. In Year 12, they take roughly around five higher tier GCSEs and nothing else.
In my case, I took two foundation tier GCSEs, Science (Biology) and Maths, and one higher tier, English Language, at the end of Year 11. I was supposed to also be entered in for English Literature, before the school conveniently decided that it shouldn't exist here because "none of the other students can access it".
This aside, I spent a lot of early 2014 moping. Eventually I decided to follow my local football club, which I did, and sometimes meet up with the other circle, but I stopped after I felt that they were merely accepting me out of pity, especially when finding out of their other social activities through Facebook. I never stayed at their homes past 7pm, and they kept wanting me to go to a special needs youth club session that was as good as abandoned. They weren't enthusiastic about the aforementioned session, either.
After a while, more or less as soon as the winter came, I started to withdraw heavily from everything. I'd sleep all day, through school, and do absolutely nothing. I didn't see the point in doing anything. I want to pursue a political career. I felt I was destined to be ignored and discarded, and that I could never achieve what I wanted to. I felt I would never be able to make a positive impact on the world that was acknowledged. I felt I was going to be nothing more than an economic burden on my mother, before eventually getting a minimum wage job, a rented bedsit, and cheap wine to help me sleep in adulthood. I felt as though my life was completely meaningless. I only had one GCSE of any genuine decency (B in English language), I was socially isolated, I felt like nobody from that school was ever a true friend towards me, and that I was on a completely different wavelength, mindset, planet from them. I didn't feel autistic. Everyone there seemed like cold narcissists who lack all sense of self-awareness in comparison to myself, whilst I feel I am neurotic.
Fortunately, an on off long distance relationship with an internet friend from October 2014 to February 2015 kept me going. I enrolled at Open Study College, with whom I am taking three A-levels. I found a music program which has enabled me to form a very scruffy and somewhat musically illiterate band. We performed on the 28th to other bands who were formed on that course, all of whom were more musically literate. I feel we were by far the worst band, but point aside, it got me outside. I also joined a political party, albeit I haven't done much in it yet.
I've always wanted the opportunity to socialise with students from mainstream schools and colleges, I assume as most teenagers within a certain town or borough attend the same school or college and that these colleges offer extracurricular activities, there is very little to no motive to attempt to establish friendships outside of their confines.
In summary, I haven't been mainstream educated, I've felt socially isolated, lonely, and discontent with it for years, even when I thought I did have "friends". When I was younger, I thought my social life would be like The Inbetweeners, or the music video for 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins.
I'm 17 and taking A-levels through distance learning. Distance learning was not my choice, and there is a reason behind it that I will get to in the paragraphs that follow.
When I was a young child, I was very hyperactive. I was expelled from my primary school on the grounds of this. I was out of school for a few years. This happened in 2005. I had just moved to a new town.
I was homeschooled for a few years, with tutoring. The children in my neighbourhood were fairly social; I could go outside and make friends. Interscholastic friendships were commonplace; one was from my old primary school, I was homeschooled, and the others went to the primary school in my new town.
I was very nearly accepted into that primary school; I actually don't remember why I wasn't. My mother has claimed that it was due to my alleged inability to take off my coat, though I'm certain I was able to do that at that age.
Moving along a few years, I started my first year at a special needs school for students with autism in 2007. I liked it. I had friends there, though I only saw them outside of school on birthday parties. That's how it continued to be for a few years, as outside of school I would hang around with the friends I had made while homeschooled. However, the one I went to mainstream primary with stopped contacting me as he got into a fight with my best friend. All these years later, he still lives at the same address and hasn't contacted me.
I consider the 2009-2010 academic year the most fun period of my life. It was also the point at which I was my most socially active. I had friends, I had a fun teacher, I loved the culture at the time, the election excited me, I got into politics, I could code, I was seemingly advanced for my age. I frequented youth clubs. I was with friends almost every day. I started to play bass. I was in Year 7.
Things started to show signs of cracking in 2010. My friends moved away. Youth centres seemingly died out. Year 8 began and the friends I had from Year 7 switched schools; I didn't exchange contact details with them, and those from Year 7 who remained, I discovered, found me annoying, though one of them who was also in my class in my first year later became friends with me.
2011, I don't have any friendships outside of school. Nobody visits, everyone lives far away, everyone feels like acquaintances. I spend literally all of my time talking to internet friends I started to make. I became aware of the socially isolated nature of my circumstances; naively, I didn't think that this was because of my school. I thought that the majority of adolescents didn't go to school with their friends, and instead befriended people based more on geographical proximity alone, which I'd later find out is completely false. I also noticed that my school was severely underfunded and lacking in decent resources in comparision to mainstream schools, though this did not start to majorly bother me until years later.
2012, I realised that the majority of friendships are formed in school. I make a Facebook account, and attend birthday parties for the first time since 2008. I successfully hold my first one at the end of that year, though only two friends came. Aside from their birthday parties, which weren't parties in the traditional sense but rather a group of 7 teenagers screaming at an XBox until roughly 9pm, I did not see these people outside of school that year.
2013, I form a band with some of them, and start to hold "gatherings", in which they'd basically come here to burp, laugh at my television and eat my food. The band wrote half a song before I lost the circle through infighting.
2014, I lose the remaining friends I have. Having taken what I view as the wrong side in the band conflict, I was almost hit by a car on the way back to school from a lunch outing. The person whom I viewed as my then best friend overreacted to this. I excommunicated the entirety of my school, abandoning my old Facebook and Skype. I decided to keep in touch with a new circle that had been formed by an old friend after an incident the year prior in which he was ostracised from the common room by the de facto school ring leader, the same person who went ape when I was nearly hit by the car, as he and his girlfriend were throwing a lunchbox around near the Wii. They had been in conflict for a whole academic year exclusively on the grounds of this.
To worsen it, the scenario of my school's academic opportunities began to sink in. At this school, very few students ever take A-levels at college, instead taking Level 2 courses and then going to work. Only one student in the entire school's history has ever studied at university. He was a music student who had private tutoring, and went to a school's sixth form for his A-levels, though allegedly, he did not like it.
To my knowledge, a student in mainstream takes a handful of entry level exams in Year 10 purely as an assessment of aptitude, and perhaps a few higher tier papers, and the rest of their higher tiers in Year 11. Typically, they'll leave a mainstream school with, or the opportunity to have obtained, roughly 11 Level 2 GCSEs.
At this school, a student only takes NOCNs and BTEC Level 1s in Year 11, with some foundation tier GCSEs, and literally nothing in Year 10. In Year 12, they take roughly around five higher tier GCSEs and nothing else.
In my case, I took two foundation tier GCSEs, Science (Biology) and Maths, and one higher tier, English Language, at the end of Year 11. I was supposed to also be entered in for English Literature, before the school conveniently decided that it shouldn't exist here because "none of the other students can access it".
This aside, I spent a lot of early 2014 moping. Eventually I decided to follow my local football club, which I did, and sometimes meet up with the other circle, but I stopped after I felt that they were merely accepting me out of pity, especially when finding out of their other social activities through Facebook. I never stayed at their homes past 7pm, and they kept wanting me to go to a special needs youth club session that was as good as abandoned. They weren't enthusiastic about the aforementioned session, either.
After a while, more or less as soon as the winter came, I started to withdraw heavily from everything. I'd sleep all day, through school, and do absolutely nothing. I didn't see the point in doing anything. I want to pursue a political career. I felt I was destined to be ignored and discarded, and that I could never achieve what I wanted to. I felt I would never be able to make a positive impact on the world that was acknowledged. I felt I was going to be nothing more than an economic burden on my mother, before eventually getting a minimum wage job, a rented bedsit, and cheap wine to help me sleep in adulthood. I felt as though my life was completely meaningless. I only had one GCSE of any genuine decency (B in English language), I was socially isolated, I felt like nobody from that school was ever a true friend towards me, and that I was on a completely different wavelength, mindset, planet from them. I didn't feel autistic. Everyone there seemed like cold narcissists who lack all sense of self-awareness in comparison to myself, whilst I feel I am neurotic.
Fortunately, an on off long distance relationship with an internet friend from October 2014 to February 2015 kept me going. I enrolled at Open Study College, with whom I am taking three A-levels. I found a music program which has enabled me to form a very scruffy and somewhat musically illiterate band. We performed on the 28th to other bands who were formed on that course, all of whom were more musically literate. I feel we were by far the worst band, but point aside, it got me outside. I also joined a political party, albeit I haven't done much in it yet.
I've always wanted the opportunity to socialise with students from mainstream schools and colleges, I assume as most teenagers within a certain town or borough attend the same school or college and that these colleges offer extracurricular activities, there is very little to no motive to attempt to establish friendships outside of their confines.
In summary, I haven't been mainstream educated, I've felt socially isolated, lonely, and discontent with it for years, even when I thought I did have "friends". When I was younger, I thought my social life would be like The Inbetweeners, or the music video for 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins.
Original post by Anonymous
In summary, I haven't been mainstream educated, I've felt socially isolated, lonely, and discontent with it for years, even when I thought I did have "friends". When I was younger, I thought my social life would be like The Inbetweeners, or the music video for 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins.
In summary, I haven't been mainstream educated, I've felt socially isolated, lonely, and discontent with it for years, even when I thought I did have "friends". When I was younger, I thought my social life would be like The Inbetweeners, or the music video for 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins.
Yeah, about that last part... Neither The Inbetweeners nor the 1979 video will be an accurate reflection of adolescent life for everyone; real life is far less glamorous. I guess you had to learn that lesson the hard way and with a lot of disappointment.
For the most part, though, what you had with people who were your friends or whom you thought were your friends is something that just happens to everyone. Backstabbers, narcissists and silly people in general will be a part of most everyone's school life. And here's the kicker: I'm pretty damn sure you'll be encountering these people for the rest of your life, just like everyone else on this planet.
The reality is that feeling socially isolated seems to be this century's plague on young people, but from what you've said, I don't think you've really had it particularly worse than everyone else who's felt the same way. Seems like you had a decent adolescence and you have the drive to make things happen for yourself. Maybe you're just facing a rut or a slump, which, again, happens to everybody. School does get exhausting after a while.
I think you're being unfair on yourself by keeping your expectations to a minimum wage job and living in a bedsit. I know a lot of people who went to my state school who could only dream of getting a B at English. Keep your feet on the ground, chin up, and do well at your A-levels, then build yourself a decent life. As for your 'isolation' problem, you've gone out, done things and made friends before, therefore you can do it again. Although a fair warning: if the same interpersonal problems keep cropping up between you and the people around you, the issue might not be them, but rather you yourself.
Original post by 9910224
Yeah, about that last part... Neither The Inbetweeners nor the 1979 video will be an accurate reflection of adolescent life for everyone; real life is far less glamorous. I guess you had to learn that lesson the hard way and with a lot of disappointment.
For the most part, though, what you had with people who were your friends or whom you thought were your friends is something that just happens to everyone. Backstabbers, narcissists and silly people in general will be a part of most everyone's school life. And here's the kicker: I'm pretty damn sure you'll be encountering these people for the rest of your life, just like everyone else on this planet.
The reality is that feeling socially isolated seems to be this century's plague on young people, but from what you've said, I don't think you've really had it particularly worse than everyone else who's felt the same way. Seems like you had a decent adolescence and you have the drive to make things happen for yourself. Maybe you're just facing a rut or a slump, which, again, happens to everybody. School does get exhausting after a while.
I think you're being unfair on yourself by keeping your expectations to a minimum wage job and living in a bedsit. I know a lot of people who went to my state school who could only dream of getting a B at English. Keep your feet on the ground, chin up, and do well at your A-levels, then build yourself a decent life. As for your 'isolation' problem, you've gone out, done things and made friends before, therefore you can do it again. Although a fair warning: if the same interpersonal problems keep cropping up between you and the people around you, the issue might not be them, but rather you yourself.
For the most part, though, what you had with people who were your friends or whom you thought were your friends is something that just happens to everyone. Backstabbers, narcissists and silly people in general will be a part of most everyone's school life. And here's the kicker: I'm pretty damn sure you'll be encountering these people for the rest of your life, just like everyone else on this planet.
The reality is that feeling socially isolated seems to be this century's plague on young people, but from what you've said, I don't think you've really had it particularly worse than everyone else who's felt the same way. Seems like you had a decent adolescence and you have the drive to make things happen for yourself. Maybe you're just facing a rut or a slump, which, again, happens to everybody. School does get exhausting after a while.
I think you're being unfair on yourself by keeping your expectations to a minimum wage job and living in a bedsit. I know a lot of people who went to my state school who could only dream of getting a B at English. Keep your feet on the ground, chin up, and do well at your A-levels, then build yourself a decent life. As for your 'isolation' problem, you've gone out, done things and made friends before, therefore you can do it again. Although a fair warning: if the same interpersonal problems keep cropping up between you and the people around you, the issue might not be them, but rather you yourself.
You're right, I haven't had it worse socially; I don't set those expectations for myself anymore, that's how I felt during winter of last year.
About the B in English; I know it's a good result, but my problem with my academic situation is that it was literally the only higher tier paper I was entered into. It's the lack of opportunity that brought me down. I would've felt better had I been entered into higher tiers and fail them than not be entered at all. And I was facing a slump academically. Socially, I still am to a lesser extent.
I feel I would've felt a lot less socially isolated had I gone to a mainstream school; this school is very small, and thus avoiding drama or establishing a new circle of friends is near impossible, and even so, I didn't feel as though any friend I had there was on my wavelength; I always got along a lot better with my internet friends and feel I have a lot more in common with them.
shawn_o1
You need to have a hide or have a hiding.
I'm taking this as a sign of interpreting this post as a melodramatic whine and plea for attention; often a common problem with how I seem to articulate myself.
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