it is the first day of February and i am crying in a cafe

It's the first day of February and I am camping in a cafe.

It's the first day of February and I am crying while camping in a café.

It's the first day of February and I am crying about being a pathological optimist while camping in a café.

I am a pathological optimist but also a realist but most importantly an idiot and this is a stream of consciousness with some kind of crux and I promise it will eventually make sense.

In Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot', the idiot is the optimist. He who pervasively believes the world to be at its core pure and good is naïve, foolish, juvenile. Optimism is ignorance, and 'ignorance is bliss but it is also blind'. The optimist is universally infantilized and patronized while his counterpart, the cynic, is praised for being wary and wise. The cynic criticizes kindness because the cynic knows that the world and its people are not kind but rather selfish, ambitious, slaves to their own desires. Call me a fool, but I choose to remain a pathological optimist but also a realist but most importantly an idiot.

Three days ago I was crying thinking about laying in my past lovers arms bound up so tight with limbs and limbs and limbs and my stomach. My stomach, my anxious little prophet, told me; This is love. Oh, love, this is love, I am in love, this is so much fucking love, what do I do with all this love. I understand now, I do.

And I thought that this is actually going to devastate me. If this ends, it will fucking obliterate me. There is no way I am making it out of this alive. I know what is happening. I can be pragmatic, too. Call it love, call it obsession, call it infatuation, call it codependency, call it a neuro-chemical con hob like a good little cynic. Call it what you will. This is not a confession, I have been in love for a while. I am wading through the depths of it or more so drowning in it, willingly. I can't imagine being anywhere else because I am a pathological optimist but also a realist but most importantly an idiot.

Lately, I've been obsessing over moments and existing inside of them for as long as they'll let me because I am a prisoner of moments, stretching them into aeons and wearing them like straight-jackets. I try to do this thing where I remain recklessly present in these moments. God knows I have spent too much of my time lingering. The all consuming optimism is always short lived by virtue of the passage of time.

I tend to do things in extremes. I have an issue with balance and existing candidly, but what poet doesn't. I have a tendency to linger because, well, what else would I write about? In case you missed it, I am a pathological optimist but also a realist but most importantly an idiot and the crux of all is this.

I want to see the good in everything but I am aware that not everything is always good. I am motion sick from how quickly my thoughts and feelings oscillate. The eternal cycle hath no end. I am a pathological optimist but also a realist but most importantly an idiot and maybe this doesn't make much sense, after all.

There is no crux.

I am a pathological pessimist but also an avoider of realism but most importantly a wretched fucking idiot.

You shouldn't let poets lie to you.