People who are truly pleasant and kind but have no close friends often spent years as someone’s emergency contact and no one’s everyday one — and the gap between those two roles is where the loneliness actually lives

My sister called me at three in the morning last month, mid-panic attack, and the first thing she said, once she could get words out, was that she hadn’t known who else to call. I picked up on the second ring, the way I always do. We stayed on the phone until…