Emily White on the loneliness epidemic

THE LONELINESS EPIDEMIC: Emily White, in (what I assume is) an excerpt from her book Lonely, describes some of her experiences of feeling profoundly alone, despite apparent success, intellect and attractiveness: of going shopping simply to talk to cashiers on the weekend. "Furious that my so-called social life had deteriorated to the point where talking to a sales assistant felt like an accomplishment, I picked up a kitchen chair and threw it against the wall. I was humiliated. I was sad... I was very, very lonely."

When I was lonely, I hid my emotional reality and lied outright. I fudged facts and did everything necessary to make my isolated life look full. I hinted that I hadn’t been single for as long as I had. I worked as a lawyer, and if someone at the office suggested I looked tired, I pretended that a busy social life was leaving me drained. I thought I was alone in doing this, but other lonely people I spoke to did the same thing. If they’d spent the evening alone at home, they’d tell others they’d had the most fantastic time, catching up on long overdue phone calls. Weekends on their own would, come Monday morning, mutate into a fictitious round of endless socialising.

Read the whole thing, even if it is at the Daily Mail (yeah, sorry about that).