About three months ago, I was at Church. I wasn't really paying attention to the liturgy, I was just sort of thinking. Regrettably, I do this sometimes. I was raised a Catholic, I was taught the order of the Mass in a classroom setting, and on the vast majority of the Sundays of my life, I've gone to Church. I've thoroughly memorized the actions, the words, the prayers, and most of the common hymns, so it can all be kind of mindless to me if I'm not careful.
What I was thinking about was the nature of individuality, especially as it relates to my own life. I recognize radical individualism as the source of most of the world's problems today. People say, "Well why should the Church tell me I can't suck dicks? I'm not hurting anyone, am I?" People say, "Well why should these racists tell me I can't fuck niggers? I'm not hurting anyone, am I?" These people reject the notion that they could ever have any responsibilities to any social unit higher than the individual, so they do whatever they want, completely heedless of the damage they're causing to society. I'm not saying Chinese hive-mind collectivism is the answer here, I'm just saying that individualism has gotten out of hand. People take it to radical extremes.
Yet, despite my realization of this, I'm something of a radical individual myself. I go to work and barely talk to anyone, I go to the store and avoid people's eyes, and at the end of every Mass I speed-walk out of the Church without a word to anyone. Not even to the priest, who is always waiting outside the door to shake your hand and talk to you if you want him to. At the end of every day, I come to nothing. I come home to nobody. I barely even call my parents anymore. I don't talk to my siblings at all outside of Christmas. I can't remember the last time I looked at someone I somewhat knew and decided I'd like to be better friends with that person. I can't remember the last time I looked at a woman and decided I'd like to get to know her. If I forget to talk to myself, I'll go so long without speaking that my lips feel stuck together. Even on 8chan, I feel like there's something about my posts that makes them stick out. Like I don't fit in with all the other Anonymouses somehow. As though, despite the fact that I've spent the better part of the past decade on imageboards, there's still something about this collective that I fail to understand.
The congregation was in the middle of singing a hymn when I came to the conclusion, "I am cursed to be the ultimate individual." In that moment, the tone of my voice shifted, and it synchronized with the voices of the other parishioners in a very pleasing way. It was as though God Himself had sent His refutation to my conclusion. A very clear, concise, and irrefutable indication that I am, in fact, more than capable of fitting in with others. I was troubled, and afraid. At the end of the Mass speed-walked out of the Church without a word to anyone.
Three months later and nothing in my life has changed. I have felt no desire to grow closer to anyone in particular, and nobody has came into my life to compel me to do so. Yet when I come home to my Nothing at the end of each day, I'm filled with a sort of melancholy. I guess you could say that I want to want to share my life with others, but, considering that I haven't yet done so, I probably don't actually want to.
And that's not okay. Affability is a virtue, and to completely disregard it as I do makes me a bad person.