It’s Valentine’s Day. The single girl’s least favourite day of the year, by most accounts. Everywhere I look today, it seems there are tools intended to make people feel more at ease with their single-dom (I admit I just made that word up). The Internet is flooded with Valentine’s Day-specific content. So far, I have seen the following- ‘Valentine’s Day Movie Ideas for Singles’ and ‘Best Anti-Valentine's Day 'I Hate Love' Songs’.
Now, since I’m a sucker for lists, I did read them. I didn’t agree with all the choices, and of course there are a lot of movies I’d watch on Valentine’s Day instead of Titanic. And how stock a pick is ‘Love Hurts’? I mean, at least put some thought into it!
If anything, I think the single people on Valentine’s Day are forced into feeling terrible by what the attached people project onto them. “Poor you, alone on Valentine’s”. I am alone the other 365 (366 in a leap year) days. No one pities me then – I don’t think – so don’t pity me now.
I’ve always thought Valentine’s to be completely ridiculous. Even as a child, I resented every moment of gluing foam hearts on a brown paper bag to hang from my desk, and getting the class list to write out Little Mermaid valentines to drop in my classmates' decorated paper bags. I’ll wear red on any day of the year other than Valentine’s Day. I got cards in the mail from my mom and dad and my sister. That’s all the love I need right now.
Sound bitter? It really shouldn’t. I’m just not into anything with this much hype (New Year’s, Halloween…). Is Valentine’s a complete ‘Hallmark Holiday’? Probably, but Hallmark can’t survive on birthday cards alone. Have I ever been in a relationship over Valentine’s Day? No. Do I care? No. The cliché is that every day, you should express your love and admiration for the person you’re with. No one I know needs cinnamon hearts do that on a daily basis.
Surprisingly enough, I’m not depressed, angry, or really affected at all by today, other than being inspired to write this.
Truth is, I’m in a great mood. I am comfortable with myself and the fact that I am single. I am not listening to the family members who say, “You don’t need one of those [a boyfriend] anyway.” As a friend of mine would say, “it’s not a fucking toaster.” Eventually I will have ‘one of those’ – a boyfriend, not a toaster - and I’m sure I’ll still have the same outlook on February 14.
I don’t need a 'special someone' in my life to tell me how wonderful I am one day a year. I can tell myself that any time I feel like it. That sounds conceited, but it isn’t. There is a huge difference between megalomania and self-assuredness. I am far from thinking I am perfect; I know I’m not. But I am content with who I am, who I have been, who I am becoming, and where I am coming from to get there.
Since when is loving yourself not enough? Maybe they should make candy hearts with sayings like, “I love me” on them, (though I just read an article on the impact of candy hearts on the environment, and the reasons we shouldn’t eat them...want to bet the scientist who did that study was single?)
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