A fool am I? For falling in love? For not checking first what awaited at the bottom of the cliff? For not questioning whether or not it was too good to be true? Am I a fool for looking at love with wide-eyes like a child? Does being an adult mean we can no longer be relentlessly optimistic- that we must act as our own life preserver, that we must be both the person jumping and the bungee rope that will catch them before their head is dashed open?
Then by all standards, Yes, I was and am a fool, a fool for not being cynical. I keep going through the motions, like a car without a steering wheel, left to careen down a hill in the vain hope that somehow the wreck I will make at the end will be better than the last. Fall for someone new again and again, like someone who goes to the doctor for a cure to their ills but then discards the pills for their bitterness in favor of the sweetness of their vices. If it is through pain that we grow up, that we are forced to mature, then how am I still but a hapless babe, unable to keep myself from grabbing a hot cake pan without protection despite being warned again and again I would be burned?
What have I learned? To not date assholes, but to be lured in by the sweet honey of others and to fall into their web, only to find they are yet more of the same? If I went to a college class only to be tricked like this I would demand a full refund, but how can one demand a refund from life?
I have learned nothing. And yet I have already begun the cycle yet again.