The pleasure principle of the exquisite pain - we really do do it to ourselves

Alcoholics use sex to help them overcome their addiction; I use one form of pain to deal with another. Yes, the pain. The oh-so-exquisite pain.

Clearly, I have a problem.

Lately I've begun to think about all the mistakes I made during the 'young and stupid' days. About 85% of all actions in the past four-odd years have been met with the same reaction: What have I done? What the fuck was I thinking? And yet the mistakes continue to happen. As the saying goes, "Once bitten, twice shy"; so in my case, it should probably be "Thirty-two times bitten, sixty-four times shy". Not that have made thirty-two mistakes in the past few years, but the number is probably close anyway. Why is it that we can never learn?

Maybe we do learn a little, but the next time around we make the same mistake, and hope against hope that things will be different, and history won't repeat itself. But then if we're making the same mistake, won't the outcome be the same as well? And no matter how much we snipe and gripe about getting our hearts broken and bang our heads against the same wall, we always end up going back for more. So do we really not learn, or are we just addicted to the drama and the pain of it all? The oh-so-exquisite pain?

God knows I've made enough mistakes to fill an entire national library. And God knows I've sworn never to repeat them, and that I'd rather hurt myself before hurting anyone else. And yet here I am now, making what is close to the same mistake that I made barely a year ago, and at the same time hoping to get out of this unscathed -- or at least alive -- without doing what I did to myself just eight months ago. It's either wishful thinking, or just plain sadism.