Continual Blindside

I can't decide if this hopeless optimism I feel is a gift or a curse, or is it optimism at all? Perhaps it's only naivete. Or perhaps it's a mixture of both. 

Synonyms for the word "naivete" include: artlessness, unsophistication, trustfulness and innocence. For the word "optimism" we have: hope, confidence, buoyancy, cheerfulness. 

I am confident that I am completely unsophisticated. Artlessness is the boat set sail by my buoyancy. I am cheerfully innocent. I am hopefully trustful. 

Therefore I don't see the train wreck coming at me in my periphery. There's no warning whistle, no rumbling of the tracks, no red lights flashing and arms dropping to stop me from standing in it's path. No, I let it hit me with the full force of its uncommunicative fury. Then I lay there in a soul shredded heap as each coal car runs me over again, and again and again. And in the milliseconds between each jarring hit, I think, "This won't happen again. This is the last one. I can change this." 

One of my favorite songs of all time is called, "Waiting for the Train to Come In." It goes like this:

"Waiting for the train to come in. Waiting for my man to come home. 

I've counted every minute of each live long day. Been so melancholy since he went away.

I've shed a million tear drops or more, waiting on the one I adore.

I'm waiting in the depot by the railroad tracks, looking for the choo-choo train that brings him back.

Waiting for my life to begin, waiting for the train to come in."

It's a song I have sung to each one of my children as I rocked them to sleep as babies. 

Truth be told, I waited so long for the train that I gave no thought to how it would arrive or in what condition. I thought I would be so content with the presence of the train that I didn't think about the actual content of the train. Certainly I expected the train to be at the station for the long haul. Instead, the engine has hitched itself to another set of cars, and made sure I felt each one of them on its way out. 

I'm not angry with the train. After all, it's just a machine. I'm angry I wasted so much time waiting for it.