I started taking lessons with Twilight a few weeks ago. Not just about Wonderbolt stuff, but with... everything. I never understood how great learning could be until I put it with something I was already amazingly awesome at.

But being all eggheady and smart isn't as great as I thought it would be. It actually kind of sucks, but I'd never tell Twilight that.

Twilight told me I should start writing stuff down to get it all out of my mind. When you start filling your head up, you gotta let it go out somewhere or else it'll pour out of your mouth at the wrong time and make you look like a moron, or it'll get all compacted in your skull and make your head explode like when you shake a soda bottle too much and don't open the cap.

Well, okay, I might be going a little overboard but you get the idea.

She'll give me little things to write about, little "prompts", she calls them, and this time she told me to write about if I had any regrets. So I guess I'm doing that now.

Anyway, being smart: you don't realize it, but not knowing stuff really does feel better. When you start learning about things and why they work and what actually happens, you see stuff that makes you kinda sad or angry that you didn't notice it before, and then you get really ticked when you realize that you were happier not knowing about that kind of stuff.

I wish I wasn't dying; we all are, all of the time, but I wish I wasn't. I wanna feel lethal, even when my pain is constant and sharp and I want to read Equestrian Psycho again even though Twilight says that will give me nightmares.

Is a wish different from a regret?

I really do like to learn... I don't feel any regrets with that.

I just remember all these random facts that she stuffed into my head about how ponies work... unicorn horns are jam packed with nerve endings so they can do magic and hollow pegasus bones let us fly and the thick, sturdy skeletal structure of an earth pony give them strength. All of those are just gonna fade away to dust, or get stuck under the ground and compressed into carbon and become fossils, if we get lucky.

I don't know why I'm like this... I'd never talk to another pony like this. It's so weird how I feel so different talking to myself inside my head when I'm all alone... it's like somepony else takes over for me and does the talking and thinking and when I'm finally alone I pat them on the back and say "thanks, I'll come and take it over from here".

There's probably some sort of psycho-mental whatever that's like this, but I don't think I got it. Twilight would have noticed if I did, right? She's always poking around in my head to make sure I didn't knock my brain loose when I crash into a tree or a brick wall or a reinforced steel structure so she'd notice if I were all broken inside.

Well, physically, I guess.

The more I learn about this "psychology" crud, especially, the more I feel like I'm not all here. Like there's something missing with me, or something that went wrong along the way that turned me into a pony who isn't quite alright upstairs. I learned about "ego defense mechanisms" and what they do for us by making sure we don't go insane, and about the different ones I use and that scares the FEATHERS off of me.

Twilight tells me that my life will be so much better when I'm educated, but I guess I was content being a simple pegasus, you know? I didn't have to worry about facts or figures or proper comma placement or physics or (ugh) psychology. When I start chasing away everything I made up for myself in the world I start to doubt everything about me, and what's left when you strip everything away? Hollow pegasus bones.

I guess the only regret I have is not having been smart enough to see how great being dumb was.

Celestia'll still rise the sun up tomorrow, and I'm gonna be flying along learning about how astrology and astronomy are actually totally different. Joy.

Oh jeez, if anypony finds this, I'm hosed. I gotta hide this real well.

-Rainbow Dash