George Michael’s ex was busted for smashing his way into the late pop star’s London home — just days before the fourth anniversary of the singer’s Christmas Day death, according to reports.

Troubled hairstylist Fadi Fawaz, 47, was confronted Tuesday morning after breaking a window to get into the “Last Christmas” star’s empty $6.75 million home, the Sun said.

“This is my place. George wanted me to have it,” he allegedly yelled at officers who arrived at the house that Fawaz was kicked out of by Michael’s family last year, the UK paper said.

Someone asked me the other day what my favorite movie was, and I immediately said Arthur, like I always do. Then they said, “Never heard of it? When did it come out?” I didn’t answer 1981, nearly 40 years ago. At that moment I felt old, out of date, and superficially shallow.

Thus, I was not surprised by a new report from The Fenway Institute that found older LGBTQ+ adults in the state of Massachusetts have been diagnosed with depression at twice the rate of their straight, cisgender peers. It could be Massachusetts or any other state, or any other country because depression among older LGBTQ+ people is real, and no doubt much more widespread than we ever realize. I always tell people that if it could happen to me, the proverbial life of the party, it can happen to anyone. Having dealt with severe depression, and then having sought out many older LGBTQ+ people who also experienced similar circumstances, I found it remarkable that we all suffered from some sort of PTSD from our youths.

Again, not surprised that the report also found that LGBTQ+ individuals were twice as likely to fall and be injured in a fall over the past year, and I wouldn’t be shocked to hear if some of that was related to dangerous behavior about feeling alone and useless. Another woman, a lesbian, told me that she had a life-threatening operation, and has not been the same since and feels there’s nothing to live for, except her cat, who is 10. Otherwise, she is alone, without her partner who died, and without a family to take care of her. The family has made her feel shame for who she is, and she worries about being alone for the remainder of her life. Some days, she doesn’t feel like getting out of bed, and subsists on her Social Security checks, desperately afraid that she’ll end up in a nursing home left to die. We didn’t discuss it, but I’m sure she feels equal trepidation about not being able to pay the costs of round-the-clock care.

Luther Vandross seemed to have it all, but according to Lenny Kravitz, the late singer struggled behind the scenes. Kravitz says Vandross was a lonely man and he tried to hide his sexual orientation from the public. The singer wanted nothing more than to live his life, but he held on to this secret until his death.

During an interview on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Patti LaBelle spoke about Vandross’ hesitance to come out. She says he told her he didn’t want to upset his mother. He also didn’t want to disappoint his female fans.

In moments of great anxiety, it is not uncommon for me to embark on late-night Grindr sessions. My fraught relationship with the ubiquitous gay dating app goes back several years, and doesn’t include a whole lot of actual dates, frankly. The endless grid of headless torsos and explicit usernames usually don’t want dates; they want “pics.” The whole exhausting experience often concludes with me staying up way too late on a weeknight, and uninstalling the app in shame.

But I keep coming back, addicted to the slot machine-like feel of the app, which LGBT researcher Jack Turban defines as the psychological concept of variable ratio enforcement. In his 2018 piece for Vox examining Grindr’s impact on the mental health of gay men, Turban says Grindr awards its users for clicking at unpredictable levels, and that’s one of the most effective ways to reinforce human behavior. In other words, Grindr works like a slot machine: once in a while you score, but more often, you fail — sending endless inquiries into the digital abyss.

Like many people, I have struggled with my mental wellbeing during the coronavirus pandemic. In a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly half of Americans said the crisis has negatively impacted their mental health. Early on, I attempted to cure my quarantine despair with Grindr, despite the obvious futility of the endeavor. While I had no intentions of actually meeting up with strangers in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, I still logged onto the app religiously, looking for an escape from my loneliness. Of course, being unable to actually meet up with anybody only increased my feeling of isolation, worsening the vicious cycle.

One Million Moms have decided that the middle of a global pandemic is the right time to try and launch a boycott of Disney because of two minor gay characters in a DuckTales cartoon.

With schools shut down due to the pandemic, the online streaming service Disney Plus has become an invaluable tool for parents everywhere trying to keep their kids occupied.

But it’s apparently not so vital for One Million Moms, a front for the anti-LGBT+ fundamentalist lobbying group American Family Association, which despite its name has just 4,787 mostly-male Twitter followers.

Coronavirus is having a particularly negative effect on older members of the LGBTQ community.

Older people already experience high levels of loneliness and social isolation, but that issue can be even more prevalent among those in the LGBTQ community, who are more likely to not have children and lack family networks.

Now, with lockdown and social-distancing measures in place as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s worried that the problem will become even worse, as visits from loved ones or carers become even less frequent or stop altogether.

Opening Doors London is the largest charity providing information and support to LGBTQ people over the age of 50 in the UK. They’ve had to halt hundreds of face-to-face visits to ensure the safety of their older members and volunteer supporters.

“For some of our members, seeing their befriender or going to one of our groups is the only time in the week that they get to be around other LGBTQ people and feel part of a community who appreciates them for who they are,” explains Befriending Coordinator Meghan Herring.

“Having to suspend our face-to-face activities, we knew that it would be hard on a lot of people. One of our members said, ‘I just want to talk freely to someone to help give my brain a break. I really need to rest it more but my thoughts have nowhere to go’.”

The gay men I work with range from their 20s to 50s. The guys in their 20s are often more attuned to coaching. They’re proactive about their growth and preempt problems by making informed choices. They can be savvy about the need for personal investment.

For older guys, certain issues come up regularly. They include learning to thrive as a gay man as they get older, finding meaningful work and creating authentic connections.

When you’re surrounded by people, you can still be isolated.

You might be in a busy bar, beer in hand, but it can feel like the loneliest place in the world.

When Damian and I started our podcast MenTalkHealth, we didn’t have a clear intent on what we wanted to do.

What came out of it was the older LGBTI people in Brighton came to us and said it was amazing. These were people that weren’t going out but they still wanted to listen to gay voices.

The majority of gay men I know are always busy, but they often don’t make any actual connections. Grindr and Scruff aren’t real. You might meet people going out to bars, with all its drinking and drugs, but you won’t find real connections there.

Loneliness, the theme of this year’s Digital Pride, is a subject which at times seems intertwined with the LGBTI experience.

Ever since Radcliffe Hall wrote their seminal novel The Well Of Loneliness we have tried to find ways to express that sense of being apart, the isolation and the pain that realization often brings.

This sense of otherness can start in our early teens, as we recognize our difference. We believe that this divides us from our family, community and friends. This is one of the reasons so much work with LGBTI focuses on building links with others, opening up the possibility that they are not alone.

It is also why when we look at resilience as a sense of belonging, and being accepted are at the core of who thrives, and who does not. When we do not feel alone or isolated, we can grow and develop to our full potential.

For many of us, especially as we grow older, it can feel as if the isolation is ever present. This is not to dismiss the wonderful communities LGBTI people have built, the families we have fought to belong to, the place in the world which often, at great cost we have carved out for ourselves. However research tells us that many LGBTQI people still feel that deep sense of isolation.