The need to be alone (that is, to be as completely apart from every other human being as it's possible for me to get) has been part of my life from early childhood. I am gregarious by neccesity, sociable only when compelled by circumstance (I work in an office; circumstance compels me to associate with co-workers, to spend time talking with them - fortunately, conversation largely restricted to the work-role is in itself a form of isolation, though an unsatisfactory form).
I'm also married, and love my wife. I like being with her, in particular I like talking with her, and listening to her tell tales of her former lives, so radically different from my own. No matter how much I care for her I still need to be alone, devoid of human company, devoid even of the indication of them denoted by the incessant babel-babble of the TV.
In solitude I find a kind of self-obliteration. I don't think, or if I think it's in disconnected images. My aim in being alone is to disconnect myself from everything, even or especially myself. To put every association that could remind me of my necessary and unavoidable connection to the world and its endless demands for my attention (and by 'world' I mean the demands of my own flesh, its hungers, its weaknesses, its constant crying to be satisfied, the wailing of a helpless thing living in a universe with which it cannot deal) as far from me as I can.
I've often wished, even as a tiny child (I have memories dating from when I was three) to wake up and find myself the only living human being on the planet.
People weary me. What they want, or appear to want, largely disgusts me. Their ambitions amuse and appal me. Their lusts amaze me by their banality. Their refusal to recognize even the simplest and most basic principles under which they might live together in peace and tolerance infuriates me. The incessant betrayals they practice against the ideals they espouse leaves me dumbfounded at the extent of their duplicity, their greed, and their stupidity.
In short, I am a dedicated and convinced misanthropist and I need some time, every day, when I am free of them - no matter whether I also care for a particular individual or not.
Solitude was my first addiction and I have no doubt that, whan all the other addictions in my life have fallen away, having proved themselves empty, this will remain.
And no, I'm not expecting any replies to this.
