Loneliness is a bully. It’s like a thug on a deserted street. It coldcocks you and then kicks you when you’re down. If you don’t fight back, it can kill you, either by forcing your own hand to take an overdose or slash your wrists or pull the trigger, or causing you to fall ill and lose the will to recover.

Loneliness is one of the lowest forms of life, right down there with drug dealers and wife beaters. And it will keep tearing you apart no matter how loudly you wail.

You’ve got to stand up to loneliness. You must not cower, because that feeds loneliness’s basest instincts. Loneliness laughs loudest when you cry and cringe.

A grief-stricken person, for example, after yet another lonely sleepless night and desperate day, has got to say, I’ve had it with this creep! Beat the bastard at its own game. When it laughs at your despair, laugh back and louder.

Be Beowulf. Grab that old sword you keep in the back of the closet and come out slashing. I guarantee the cowardly bully will run from the house. If he doesn’t, cut the bastard’s head off.

If you don’t happen to have an old sword in the back of the closet, then tell loneliness to go fuck itself.