More than any other emotion, loneliness feels like it’s your own fault, like you’re being punished for the crime of being yourself. This makes it especially dreadful to bear witness to a lonely kid. A kid feeling ashamed of something that’s out of their control? Intolerable. Anything to make it go away.

But sometimes, loneliness really does come from within; some people have more attunement toward it and feel it more acutely. It’s part of who they are. External conditions might change, but the feeling won’t. It is, after all, an evolutionary adaptation, a result of our species relying on our social groups for survival. It’s what compels a lot of people to make art. It’s why many writers write. Loneliness can be generative.

That’s not how we tend to think of it. Over the past few decades,

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