The world is full of lonely people, now more than ever

Loneliness: a side effect of lockdown, this is the world’s silent pandemic.

I live with three other people – five if you count the canine children – yet sometimes in these strange new days, with our strange new ways, I feel so lonely I could curl into a ball and weep.

Do you feel it too? I miss the solidarity of shared smiles, because they’re all behind masks now.

I miss accidental, incidental contact, those brief moments in offices, gyms, restaurants, changing rooms, cinema queues and on the street.

I miss jostling alongside the rest of humanity in supermarket aisles, helping someone reach the top shelf without them looking at me like I’m leprous, like I should be ringing a bell and wearing a sign.

I miss the natural stroking of an arm, the steering of an elbow, the placing of a quick hand on a shoulder.

I miss shaking hands. I miss bear hugs from friends.

I even miss awkwardly greeting acquaintances, because while I thought I hated air-kissing, I find myself wanting the soft brush of a cheek, the brief waft of someone else’s scent.

I miss feeling I am part of a community, instead of stepping apart from it for the safety of us all.

But if I miss the day-to-day embrace of humanity, what is it like for people who really are alone: single people, pensioners, people working from home in faraway places?

How do they socialise and make friends now? How do they begin to find love?

I regularly message one friend living by herself in another country. A few months back, with no more water-cooler work chats, she went fully 10 days without seeing another face.

I noticed her messages becoming weirder, rambling, so I urged her to go to the shops, where she found she couldn’t stop talking to the pharmacist because she was so relieved just to be in the proximity of another human being.

I cannot bear to think how it must be to not have been hugged, caressed, or brushed in passing by another person in five long months.

Imagine the yearning, the craving, the loneliness… Much research has been done into the absence of touch; none of it is good.

Yet the world is full of lonely people, now more than ever.

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