MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Britney, the world’s saddest, loneliest star, is on the brink as never

Britney’s on the brink as never before.

Following the bombshell announcement that Spears and husband Sam Asghari are divorcing, sources say Britney is deeply unwell, unstable and all alone.

Her mother Lynne Spears, according to an insider, is ‘furious’ at Asghari for leaving her daughter in such a precarious state and is now desperate for Britney to move in with her.

‘Family and friends feel it is truly at the point of life and death,’ the source told DailyMail.com. ‘The last thing anyone wants to do is to put her into another conservatorship.’

For here’s the catch: Britney was freed from her controversial conservatorship after nearly 14 years in November 2021. Her case was so consequential that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law in 2022 enacting new limitations requiring judges to document every possible alternative before issuing one.

The implication, says this source, is that things are so dire the family would petition for another conservatorship if they could.

Compounding Britney’s troubles, Asghari is allegedly threatening to release ‘extraordinarily embarrassing information’ unless she renegotiates their prenup.

Long before Asghari issued an insolent ‘Sh*t happens’, on Instagram Thursday, saying that he and Brit ‘will hold onto the love and respect we have for each other… I wish her the best always,’ the leaks had already began.

Allegations that Britney cheated with a household staff member — caught on video — and that she physically assaulted her husband quickly surfaced. 

If Asghari truly wishes his troubled wife the best, why not take whatever riches he amassed during this brief marriage and slink away quietly? Why add to her misery? 

Britney Spears, 41, once the most famous pop star on the planet, is — save for household staff — very much on her own.

Her teenage sons now live with their father in Hawaii.

The publicized recent rapprochement with sister Jamie Lynn may not have been a success. ‘Britney is still very angry with Jamie Lynn,’ a source told Page Six.

DailyMail.com reported on Thursday that they’re working on their relationship.

Britney’s mother visited her in May, but ‘there’s still a lot of hurt there,’ the Page Six source said, ‘so they haven’t quite reconciled.’

And, of course, her father Jamie, who oversaw Britney’s conservatorship and paid himself $16,000 a month out of his daughter’s estate for at least 12 years, is fully estranged.

Has there been a sadder, lonelier star in recent memory?

Asghari, it seems, is just the latest man to take advantage of Spears, who — despite her wealth, fame and beauty — has spent the bulk of her adult life in crisis. Until the #FreeBritney movement, she was the butt of one long, cruel joke: How low can this bimbo go?

She began publicly unraveling in 2007: Shaving her head, attacking a paparazzo’s vehicle with an umbrella, strolling into gas station bathrooms barefoot, photographed without her underwear, nearly dropping her baby and later driving with him on her lap.

It all culminated in a standoff with police after she barricaded herself and her child in a bathroom, leading to her involuntary hospitalization.

She was only 26 years old, met not with compassion but revulsion and mockery.

Her mental collapse coincided with the birth and explosion of celebrity blogs, none more popular and mean-spirited than Perez Hilton’s.

When Heath Ledger died in 2008, Hilton — who has since apologized — made t-shirts that read: ‘Why couldn’t it have been Britney?’

That same year, an episode of ‘Family Feud’ featured a game called ‘Name Something Britney Spears Has Lost in the Past Year.’

The contestants pounced: ‘Her husband’; ‘her hair’; ‘her sanity’. 

Cheers and laughter and applause. 

‘I’ll give you the Salt Lake City answer,’ said a contestant named Mike. ‘Her virginity.’ 

Other responses: Her career, her underwear, respect, dignity, her children, weight. Her fans. 

Truly, America laughed.

To look at photos of Britney back then, bald and miserable, is to recall no one so much as another complicated, talented star we just lost: Sinéad O’Connor. 

But Sinéad’s suffering, in her later years, was more private. Perhaps that’s why her death last month, at age 56, felt like such a shock. 

Britney’s suffering has almost always been public. It can feel, alternately, like a cry for help and just her native way of being — famous for so long that she knows nothing else. 

Perhaps that’s why those closest to her are speaking out, making it clear that they want to help her without institutionalizing her.

The Britney we’ve seen post-conservatorship has been a regression: Posting videos to social media in which she’s unkempt, barely dressed, dancing on a stripper pole, chasing a newly-minted NBA star through a Las Vegas hotel lobby and getting swatted away by his security. Losing her sons.

Now she’s looking at an ugly divorce from a 29-year-old showbiz wannabe who, rather than keeping the gory details of her life private, allegedly threatens to release them if he doesn’t get a hefty payout.

No one thinks marriage to Britney would be easy. But Asghari had been with her for six years, pre and post-conservatorship. You can’t say he didn’t know what he was getting into.

Now he’s playing the good-guy and it’s all rather seamy. Exploitative. Kicking someone when they’re down.

‘Saving Britney,’ a source close to Asghari told DailyMail.com, is now unlikely. 

What a terrible thing to say. How hubristic of him to think that he could do it. 

‘The reality of life with Britney was that it was not fun,’ said the source, ‘and it’s not a surprise at all that the marriage didn’t last.’ 

Of course it wasn’t fun. Life with a woman, sexualized and commodified at a young age, surrounded by people who mostly ever wanted something from her — money, fame, reflected glory — was never going to be simple.

Last year, Ashari took to social media to defend Britney. ‘I have respect her privacy and I protect it at all times,’ he said.

What a hypocrite.

I’d like to see Asghari have his life dissected like a cadaver, every mistake or embarrassment or family fight or psychiatric illness parceled out for entertainment, betrayed by those closest to him, and still marshall the resources to survive it. For decades.

A weaker person would have been done in by half of this stuff.

So hold a good thought for Britney Jean Spears. She’s saved herself before. May she do it again.