I'd have to be a completely different person. My psychology is incompatible with a happy life. In another time, I think I would have given myself to a cause and died that way.
We all like to talk about the idealism of people who do that - who go out of their way to sacrifice themselves for others. I've come to look at it the other way around. I ask myself, "Why did they act as if their life didn't matter to them?". That's the question that gets to the heart of the matter, in my opinion. If relationships are painful for you, if life consists mostly of drudgery and pain, self-sacrifice loses meaning - because what are you losing at that point? Regarding the gurus and holy men society has idealized in the past, the profound, unrelenting self-abnegation of asceticism just becomes a way to transform your suffering into something that seems meaningful.
I am 32, and I haven't been happy to be here since I was a small child. Of course, I didn't have the words for it then. I just remember the palpable sense of wrongness when I thought about myself in relation to others.
Some percentage of people are born every day who, by their temperament or by life circumstances, just will not fall within the normal no matter how hard they may try to fit in.
And no matter how much you can try to make peace with being this way, you are still a social animal at the end of the day. No amount of meditation, enjoying the beauty of nature, or experiencing the sense pleasures of life is going to make up for that. We are hardwired to feel emotional pain when we're ostracized or isolated.
I need to die in a war, or go save people from disease only to succumb myself or become a nun and live out the rest of my life in a convent. There is nothing for me here in normal life. I will not subject myself to a loveless marriage or a fruitless career or a string of transactional "friendships" where people extract what they want from me and then cast me aside.
After my parents die, who will actually give a fuck about my life? I certainly won't. If I have to suffer, I would at least hope to be useful. We'll see if I have any luck with that.