cringe: the college years

College-aged me (when I re-read this I said, "Damn, man, my MOM listens to Coldplay now."):

I have to write a one-to-two pager on what we would learn about love if Ovid's Apollo and Daphne were our only example of it. My paper is about halfway finished and it is getting rather cynical. But then I guess it's easy to play the cynic in love when you are surrounded by happily in-love people while you yourself are unattached.
"What's that? Oh, you're all talking to your boyfriends? That's great. No, I'll just be in my room listening to Coldplay. Yeah."

BONUS!  Here is the "cynical" paper.  Guess who reads a lot of Milan Kundera?  That's right, College-me:

Love’s childlike body gives him the appearance of innocence personified, but this is a dangerous assumption to make about the one responsible for the most adult stirrings in mortals and gods. Dare to approach Love flippantly, or worse, mockingly, and learn that Love, after all, is not patient, kind, or free of envy. Especially is Love is prone to anger when mocked, and what Love lacks in benevolence he makes up for in power. Anyone else’s weapons might kill, if aimed correctly, but Love’s arrows are always sure, and always have the desired effect.
Love encourages its victim to engage in a hopeless pursuit, without rest, without thought. Because of Love, one loses grasp of rational thought and thinks instead in the language of hyperbole, or worse, metaphor. In the eyes of the afflicted lover, the beloved is flawless and this perfection is only enhanced in flight. The disorder of the beloved is juxtaposed with the lover’s wish to reign her in, and this destructive line of thought blinds the afflicted to anything the beloved might be lacking, including the rather important detail of reciprocated interest. Even so, as the lover longs to hold and control the beloved, it is the hopeless pursuit that beckons him further.
This mad, Love-led chase does more than put its victim outside of rationality. Love is essential for the survival of the lover, detrimental to the continued existence of the beloved, turning one into a predator, the other into prey. The beloved must also pay for refusing Love by an even more drastic dehumanization – losing love altogether. Her coolness towards her lover turns into a veneer impenetrable not only from the outside, but also from within. Her heart is trapped; she doesn’t have to accept the unwanted advances of her lover, but she’ll never have that chance again.
Strangely enough, the scorned lover is further blinded by Love, and accepts the loss of his beloved as a gain due to the imagined consent of the beloved. Under Love’s spell even a sneeze seems significant; a slight nod of the head, as subtle as a light breeze in a treetop, may as well be a profession of love. If anything, the lover carries his lost beloved forever, through the memory of that shared, insane chase. In this way he makes the beloved his completely, no one else had that chase, and no one else ever will. The lover can forever exalt in the beauty of his beloved, and perhaps the better for him that that perfect chase will remain unmarred.