Your heavy bookcase needs to get from the bedroom to the living room, but there’s no one in your apartment to help you. Don’t worry! Follow these seven simple steps to safely move your furniture by yourself.

Step 1: Admit that you’re alone.
Admitting your aloneness is the first step in doing anything by yourself, and moving your bookcase is no exception. Look in the mirror and repeat, “I’m alone, totally alone,” until you start to cry. Tears are weakness leaking out of the body, and you have to purge yourself of all weakness before you can begin. This thing is freaking heavy.

Step 2: Lighten your load.
Remove all of the books from the bookcase and burn them in a bonfire. You don’t need books! Books are for the weak and intellectual, and you are no longer weak. You are strength incarnate. The fire fills you with the warmth that you used to derive from human contact. Suddenly, you feel a little less alone. Everyone else is the alone ones. Everyone else are the alone ones? You needn’t worry about proper grammar any longer.

Step 3: Use furniture sliders.
Carefully lift each corner of the bookcase about an inch, and place a plastic furniture slider underneath. You can find affordable furniture sliders at any home-improvement store, in the aisle for people who are alone. They are located between Drywall for One and the Conversation Roomba. Buy them under the cover of darkness.

Step 4: Get moving.
Slowly slide the bookcase a few inches at a time—safety first! Hey, not so fast. Why are you trying to do this so fast? The bookcase topples over, pinning you to the floor. You try to escape, but your newfound strength disappears faster than the delivery guy when you shout into your empty house, “Guys, pizza’s here!” Wait, is that pizza sauce by your head? Or blood?

Step 5: Die.

Step 6: Come back as a ghost.
Congratulations, the hellish nightmare of being alive and unable to move a bookcase is finally over! You are a ghost now, which means you are able to move furniture however you please. Shake those dresser drawers. Open and close those kitchen cabinets. Scrape that bookcase across the bedroom floor and terrify the new renter, who is trying to sleep. Wait, slow down! The bookcase topples onto the bed, crushing the new renter to death. Not again! You are so bad at this. You should really stop trying to move all this damn furniture yourself.

Step 7: Surrender to fate.
The new renter is now a ghost. Because both of you died in tragic, furniture-related accidents, Ghost Law dictates that you both must haunt this apartment for the rest of time. You decide to marry each other out of convenience and for the ghost tax incentives. You consummate your ghost relationship on top of the bookcase. It’s not the best sex you’ve ever had, but it’ll do for all eternity.

Congratulations—you’re not alone anymore!