'I can't walk, my speech is fucked up and I can't do anything for myself,' Fleischman, said. 'My wife helps me get into bed and I can't dress or put on my shoes. I am taking a gentle way out. It is the easiest way out for me.'

A new study from, Cigna, one of America's largest health insurers, finds that 58 percent of adults in the U.S. consider themselves lonely, and those that are younger, poorer or of a minority race are most likely to suffer.

“[Not the asshole] The family is taking advantage of your brother and keeps moving more people into the house he OWNS. I am assuming nobody pays rent. It is your brother’s right to evict them. Maybe your stepsister should take responsibility for herself and the unborn baby. I can’t believe these people wanted to put you in a shed.”

Sometimes, it’s not monogamy itself that is pathological but the commitment to the particular relationship. A relationship may be or may have become bad for you. Monogamy is then avoidant of change and any stigmas associated with splitting up. Ironically, these stigmas are often rather minor but they can seem major while you’re married. Worst of all, a commitment to monogamy in a relationship that isn’t working can keep the couple from insisting on what is needed to make it work.

Q. I accidentally made everyone hate me: I’m a first-year teacher at an urban Title I middle school. As is common for many teachers in my position, I’m using my personal paycheck to cover the gaps that classroom funding doesn’t. After I realized at the beginning of the year that many of my students were having trouble concentrating, I started keeping a stash of healthy snacks near my desk. The students know they can come take a snack when they need one. The costs add up quickly, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make if it helps my kids focus.

Not long after I started keeping the food in my room, I began noticing it disappearing dramatically between the time I left each afternoon and the time I clocked in the next morning. The only staff who have a key to my room are the custodians and the administrators—both of whom are fed a meal by the cafeteria if they work nights. Because I rarely stay late enough to see the night staff in person, I started leaving notes on the snacks, stating that they were for students. When that didn’t work, I eventually hid them in my desk or closet (neither of which lock). They were still being taken. I weighed my options and realized I was either going to have to stop buying food for the kids or tell someone, so I mentioned what was happening to our head of facilities. Unbeknownst to me, our head of security hid a camera in the classroom, caught the custodian who was stealing, and promptly fired him.

My students’ food is no longer disappearing, but now I have another problem: All my co-workers hate me! The administrative assistant told anyone who would listen what happened, and now everyone is angry that I caused someone to lose his job. Some of the other teachers had also grumbled in the teachers’ lounge about food going missing from their rooms, so I know I’m not the only one who was upset, but apparently I broke some unspoken rule about tolerating food theft. Was I wrong to report it? I’m seriously considering quitting because so many people are suddenly being hostile and treating me like an entitled Karen.

Throughout my life, ever since my earliest memory, I have never even spared a single, solitary thought on the idea that I was in any way unequal to a man. It never crossed my mind that I would not have my own career, be in any way financially dependent on a wallet with testicles. It never occurred to me that a woman could not run the country (I was born under Thatcher), that a woman could not be a boss (my mum was one) that a woman could not shoot, ride and fight like a man (yes, I may have watched a lot of Calamity Jane and Buffy growing up).

Gender inequality? It was a systemic issue to be toppled, sure, but not a lived reality for me.

And yet now, at 31, I find myself wrestling with a belated and thoroughly unpleasant notion.

We are not equal.

Why? Because I’m in that decade, the one where marriage and babies becomes, not a ‘one day’ concern, but an approaching reality. And yet- should I be lucky enough to have a baby- the idea of having one fills me with an absolute, vicelike dread. Because it may take two to bonk that baby into existence, but after the fun part’s over; it’s all on me.

Humans, like nature itself, abhor a vacuum—and there’s been no vacuum lately quite like the tedious months of COVID-19 quarantine. In nature, air rushes in to fill the empty space. In the time of pandemic, it’s been alcohol. That, at least, is the finding of a new survey of American adults conducted by the RAND Corporation and published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open. But the study bears close reading.

From the very start of the pandemic, it was clear that alcohol was going to be the medication of choice for a lot of Americans, especially during the early days when panicky shoppers were hoarding toilet paper, hand sanitizer, bottled water, and groceries. During the week ending March 21, national alcohol sales increased 54% from the same week a year before and online sales leapt a staggering 262%.

The question was, with more alcohol on hand—and plenty more available as soon as stores began to reopen but stay-at-home guidelines remained in place—would people actually consume more? The answer, according to the RAND researchers, who surveyed a sample group of 1,540 adults, was: And how.

The rate of suicide among those aged 10 to 24 increased nearly 60% between 2007 and 2018, according to a report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rise occurred in most states, with 42 experiencing significant increases.

"It's a real trend that has been demanding, for a while, a serious public health and research effort to understand what is happening and why," said Anna Mueller, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University Bloomington who studies suicides in adolescents. "I don't buy that it's just social media, which is one of the explanations that I most consistently see."

"We absolutely need to be really careful to not think about suicide as just a white kid problem," Mueller said. "It's absolutely not. Kids across racial and ethnic groups and sexual orientations experience suicidal thoughts, and even attempt at significant rates."

But Mueller cautioned not to lose sight of the fact that suicidal thoughts are not uncommon, especially among young people.