Might be an age thing - the longer you spend on the planet, the more ways you learn to find the animal, mineral, or vegetable companionship that lessens loneliness.

And the older you get, sometimes the busier you get. The more things you want to do, and the more people you find who are willing to rub up against you when necessary.

Canadian poet, Susan Musgrave has written two of the most where's-the-nearest-bridge poems I've ever read. I posted one on my blog here.

The other is in her book Origami Doves. This link will take you to the book. Scroll down to the table of contents and look for the title poem. Click it and read it aloud or silently. You will get to these lines:

Now I know:

that between birth and death there is only

loneliness, so big that it makes love

seem spectacularly small, with no grave,

big enough to contain our grief.

Loneliness

takes the good out of all of our goodbyes,

more permanent than the sadness you know

when your lover drives away having lost

interest in everything about you, especially

your suffering. Love's a blip, a glitch,

but loneliness signs on for the duration...

Loneliness is so big

that when it moves into your house you feel

as if someone has moved away

I see how true loneliness has

become when he takes up with me

and walks me through the world I have always

called my home. Only in darkness I see now

it has never been my home.