‘My circle is shrinking, along with my confidence’

Ellen Hodgetts, 23, PR executive, London

‘Before the pandemic, my life was busy, noisy and bursting with plans. I spent my nine-to-five working at the bustling office of a public relations firm in London’s Soho, and my weekends visiting galleries and museums before squeezing friends into my rented kitchen for long, noisy dinners. I live with a few of those friends, and my house is always filled with laughter and friendly faces. And yet, the past months have been some of the loneliest of my life. My housemates are all in relationships, and while it’s never bothered me before, now my world has shrunk to the size of our flat – and those relationships with colleagues and uni friends outside of the house have been forced into the digital realm – I’m increasingly aware that everyone else has someone in their corner. I miss having access to my wider friendship group, colleagues and even those casual acquaintances who you only really see in the context of large groups. It’s a cruel irony that the longer I’ve felt lonely, the more it’s made me doubt those relationships with my wider friendship group that I was once wholly confident in. I finely tune every text I send in case it could be read the wrong way and lose hours to analysing phone conversations. I realise that I’m fortunate: my phone has never lit up so often with messages from friends and loved ones, but it’s like this lonely mindset obscures the evidence that I’m wanted, valued and loved. And so I find myself, routinely, sitting on my bed thinking: “Well, I guess no one likes me any more.”’