Thuffering Thuccotash

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So...I went on a date with a guy today (at least, I think it was a date. Those of you who are also single will understand the processes that lead to this sort of lack of clarity.  But, he asked and he paid, so we'll operate under that assumption for the purpose of this discussion).  As I'm sitting there, trying to think of things to say that are funny and charming yet still socially appropriate and reminding myself that everyone takes a little getting used to, and that you have to get to know a person before you really start warming up to them--I start to wonder if I even really want to put energy into trying to get past the first date. 

I've been through roughly 8 legitimate boyfriends, some of them pretty serious ones, and a few other smaller less substantial relationships which may be described as somewhat romantic.  None of them have ended successfully, and all of them have ended--quite predictably--with me angry at myself and questioning my value and generally feeling heartbroken that it didn't "work".  I feel like i've sort of "experienced it all" at this point.  I've read through every option in this Choose Your Own Adventure novel, and I know what happens if I turn left instead of right.  I also know what happens if I turn right.

Sitting in a restaurant, staring across the table at yet another option that will lead to either heartbrake or heartmauling I'm rather inclined to put down the book.

Later, snuggled up at home with an empty bowl of ice cream and the credits rolling on yet another predictable and only mildly satisfying girly movie, I decide to drown my sorrows in an incredibly productive foray into the recesses of online social networking and I come across this quote by C.S. Lewis:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.

Gotta love Clive.  He really knows how to bluntly outline what is wrong with my rationale.  It's rather ironic that in order to avoid hell, you have to constantly be putting yourself through hell, but that, as they say, is the work.  Here is my problem with it: I have thrown myself head-first into every relationship I've ever had and regretted it every time.  I keep telling myself that I need to be smarter; more thoughtful; more reserved--less stupid, basically.  But here's the rub: now that I've somewhat achieved a sufficiently detached emotionality to make smarter relationship decisions I feel so much more disconnected from the love I really want and the person I really am.  I don't want to go through hell again.  Please, anything but that again.  And yet, there is no other way to heaven.

urgh.

Nothing to do but act with reckless abandon.  I rather feel like the cartoon character who, recognizing the unavaoidable, hits himself over the head with the anvil. 

Here I go.  Yipee.