Single in a small town (Part One)

It was last Sunday morning when I decided to make the trek to the church that I've called my home congregation for the previous three plus decades. I had not attended my home church for the past several weeks for various reasons. The main reason was that I had had somewhat of an epiphany during the last week of 2007 which had lead me to make the decision to give my home congregation a rest and try visiting with a neighboring congregation where the majority of my family attends.
I sat down at one end of the table in my sunday school class, in between two members who have been happily married (my guess) for quite some time. The two women don't acknowledge me for at least five minutes. They continue to talk over me, acting as if I'm not even there, involving themselves in some meaningless and frivolous conversation. After five minutes of this, the woman on my right stops long enough to pat me on the arm and say something to me and then continues once again to talk over me until the class starts. No one else acknowledges me at all. Not even when the class is over and I make my exit.
The moment leading up to all of this had been when I found myself totally alone at the annual Christmas Eve candlelight church service. During the Christmas Eve service I had been forced to sit alone while happy couples with their perfect little families sat all around me. There didn't seem to be another solitary soul in that church on that Christmas Eve night who looked to be as alone as I felt. If they were they were doing one hell of a job hiding it.
I felt then like I do just about everywhere I go these days. With that I mean that I felt totally out of place and unwanted. Of the 200 or more people who were there that night, none of them made any effort to erase my doubts and fears and welcome me into their celebration of the holidays. Instead, I sat there and remained the social pariah that I felt myself to be. My children were eighty miles away with their mom and the rest of my family were doing their own thing with lovers, spouses, friends or what have you. I could have gone with them I suppose but would have been the fifth wheel. I, on the other hand, couldn't have found a lover or a friend that night if my very life had depended on it.
I'm digressing I know, so let me get me back to the subject of the one person in our congregation who best sums up my feelings of anger and contempt for this small town trap that I seem to have been born into. I had broken up with my girlfriend eight months earlier due to the fact that we simply wanted different things. She was a good person but there were many things that our relationship was lacking so I had decided it was best that we just cut our losses. I cared for her and would never have purposely hurt her but I felt it was for the best. We had remained friends even after the breakup and now eight months later she was taking a job in a town that was two hours away. One of her close friends, who also happened to be a member of our church, decided to give her a going away party. It was no surprise that members of our sunday school class would be invited since we had been introduced by that same class at a party.
This one person is a regular in our sunday school class and when I arrived at the party I found her in a group on the opposite side of the room from my ex-girlfriend. After speaking to my ex, I decided that I would go over and try to speak. I had no more than gotten the word hello out of my mouth when this unnamed and very self absorbed person loudly announces to the group that they should move into an adjoining room where the fireplace is located because it was warmer there. The woman never acknowledged my presence and then proceeded to lead the group into the adjoining room while I was literally in the middle of completing my greeting to the group. Talk about rude. After leading them into the adjoining room she then proceeded to tell the group about how well her daughter was doing in college and how she had applied for 10 or 12 jobs while she had been home from college and yada yada yada ad nauseum. I stood there speechless and very hurt. The aforementioned offender was so clueless that she has yet to realize how rude she was. I simply told my children that it was time for us to be going.
This woman, unfortunately, represents the majority of the people I come into contact with in this town that I seem to be a prisoner of. I was so disgusted with her that I skipped sunday school so as to avoid being in the same room with her. When I did decide to return I was greeted with the aforementioned experience of the two chattering women talking over me. This is what I seem to have to look forward to these days. It's been almost ten months since I've had a date. Sometimes I have to wonder if lonliness has it's own scent. Maybe people smell my loneliness and feelings of isolation and being misunderstood. Maybe they're afraid that it's contagious and that if you get too close to a lonely person, everything and everyone that you love will disappear from you.