Slipping to the right, I avoided Ali’s cross and popped up outside of his guard and landed a clean right hook on his jaw that, even through the headgear, must have stung a fair bit.
But instead of getting upset, Ali just smiled, as he shook his head and bounced on the balls of his feet, “Okay, Muhammad Ali, I see you, I see you.”
I grinned and shuffled my feet, showboating a little, “Been practicing my footwork in my spare time; guess it’s paid off.”
Ali licked his lips and moved to the middle of the ring, “That’s good, but what you really need to focus on is your head movements.
Get that bob and weave down and you’ll be a pain to pin down in the ring, and you’ll be able to counter from a stronger position.
Pause the sparring for a second; let’s run that back.”
I nodded and joined Ali in the middle of the ring.
“Alright, half speed, and this time instead of moving your feet use your head and shoulders to slip underneath my arm and then, as you pop back up, use that momentum and your hips to whip your hand around,” Ali instructed as he threw the same cross.
‘Head, shoulders, slip, and drive,’ I repeated in my head as I rolled underneath Ali’s punch before popping up like a jack in the box, and even at half speed I could feel the additional force behind my punch.
“That’s more like it!” Ali cheered as he slammed his gloves together in excitement, “And the really good thing about that is if you’re fast enough, you can completely disappear from your opponent’s field of view and leave them guessing.”
“Sounds good, can we go another round?” I asked as I shuffled my feet to keep my heart rate up.
“Fuck no, we’ve been at it for three hours now,” Ali muttered as he started undoing the straps of his gloves, “Find some other old man to beat up on, or better yet, go enjoy being a kid.”
“Being a kid is overrated,” I muttered but reluctantly started to take off my gear, “Same time tomorrow?”
“Sorry, no can do,” Ali shook his head, “NA meeting at night and shit to do during the day.
Besides, doesn’t school start for you in the next few days.”
“Fuck,” I let out a quiet groan, “It starts Monday.”
“How the hell did you manage to forget that?” Ali muttered as he looked on with concern, “Maybe you’ve been spending a bit too much time in here.”
“It just slipped my mind,” I muttered, “But can you really blame me?
Who looks forward to going back to school?
That place is hell.”
“What, you struggle in your classes?” Ali asked.
I scoffed, “I wish, then there would at least be some challenge.
Instead, I have to sit in mind-numbing lectures all day surrounded by idiots who act like they’re grown when in reality they’re all just projecting their insecurities.”
“Uh-huh, and that frustrates you because…” Ali prompted, making me pause, “Because I want to be better than them, but comparing myself to them is really just my insecurity.”
Ali clapped me on the shoulder, “I think you’ll be surprised just how different this year will be for you.
Now get on out of here and good work today!”
Jogging home from the gym, my mind was blissfully empty as I coasted on autopilot and let the deafening bass of my headphones drown out the world around me.
The mix of physical exertion and the drain on my social battery from talking to Ali had me numb.
I was confident that someone could run right up alongside of me and I wouldn’t notice for a minute, so isolated in my world of dissociation.
I was so far gone that I didn’t even register someone was riding a bike in front of me until a truck blazed by honking its horn and swerving dangerously close to the biker who lost control and fell to the ground.
The suddenness of it all was enough to snap me back to reality, and I reached up to take out my earbuds as the truck sped off down the street.
“Hey, you alright?”
“Y-yeah, I’m okay…but what the fuck, why would anyone do that?!” The biker protested as she stood up, brushing herself off before looking over at me.
I watched as her eyes widened a bit, and when I looked into them, I felt a strange buzzing noise in my ears, “Simple, people are unhappy assholes that take out their issues on everyone else.”
“Y-yeah,” The tall skinny blonde with colorful highlights in her hair nodded with a slightly lost look in her eyes, as the buzzing static in my ears shifted, becoming clearer and almost intelligible, “I’m Jules by the way, thanks for stopping to check on me.”
“Adrian, and it’s no problem,” I muttered as the buzzing turned into a distant but tempting voice, one that made my hand curl into a fist as I dug my fingernails into my palm, hoping that sharp pain would ground me.
“Do you live around here?” Jules asked as she glanced away and bent over to pick up her bike.
I shook my head as the whispers died down a little, “A couple of streets over…are you new to the area…I haven’t seen you before.”
“Yeah, I just moved in a couple of weeks ago with my dad,” Jules said as she stood back up with her bike and went to turn her eyes back on me, but I quickly glanced away before the voices could pick back up.
“Well, it was nice meeting you, and I hope you get home safely,” I muttered quickly as I stepped around Jules and quickly put my headphones back in, turning the volume to the max as I started jogging again.
But the blissful emptiness was gone, and I had to remind myself to breathe while thinking about my stride.
I focused on every single biomechanical detail of my stride to ignore the dark whispers still echoing in the back of my head and the temptation they brought with them.
That was the second reason I secluded myself from everyone around me, why I always refused to look people in the eyes.
A symptom that my doctor had incorrectly diagnosed as just autism all those years ago.
The voices had been there for as long as I could remember, sometimes when I was stressed or overly excited, but always when I looked into someone’s eyes.
It was like a part of me separated itself and took on its own consciousness, whispering ideas and suggestions that bordered on the extreme.
I remembered the first time I caved and listened to them…I was maybe five or seven, and for some reason I was convinced that someone was hiding in the walls of my bedroom.
I ended up putting roughly twenty holes in the drywall with a pair of scissors before my parents caught me.
Instinctively, I understood that they were angry and concerned, so I made an excuse and hid the voices, not only out of fear of consequences but because I was afraid they would somehow take the voices away and the exhilarating rush I had felt as I tore up my bedroom walls.
After that incident, I kept a tight lid on my urges, rarely letting them take hold of my mind unless I was absolutely sure that I wouldn’t be caught.
It wasn’t until sometime in middle school that I learned about schizophrenia and how those with it experienced sensory delusions and manic episodes.
Maybe after learning I had a serious mental illness that would complicate my quality of life forever, I should have gone to my parents for help.
But by that point I saw what medication could do to a person, and I decided that the voices were a far better alternative.