It happens every year. The holidays end and I breathe a sigh of relaxed pleasure. Life has returned to normal. All is well. And then, I wander into, say, the grocery store for the single girl staple of a bottle of wine and a magazine and ...
... there it is.
Tormenting me.
Freaking Valentine's Day.
The shelves are awash in red, pink, and white. There's candy EVERYWHERE. There are little hearts and fluffy teddy bears and bows and cellophane every way you turn.
Frankly, it makes me want to poke out my own eyes.
I once had a friend who proposed that Valentine's Day is a holiday perpetuated by greeting card companies. While this may in fact be true, I would like to submit that I fully believe that they are in league with dating sites, chocolate makers, and possibly the major psychiatric associations who see the reactions of single people everywhere and rub their hands together with unadulterated glee.
Or, you know, I might be overreacting.
Here's my thing with Valentine's Day: I don't mind being single. I'm self sufficient. Hell, I even killed a spider the other day and disposed of the corpse. BY MYSELF. I don't need a knight on a white horse (Armour? Horse poo? No thanks) because you know who rescues me when I'm a damsel in distress?
I do. That's who.
In fact, as a buddy pointed out the other night, "Sometimes I miss being in a relationship ... but then I realize that there's NO drama when it's just me." So true. When I'm single? I live in a drama free zip code. (Well, okay, except for the mild hysteria involved with the appearance of the previously mentioned gigantic hairy mutant spider that wandered INTO my zip code. I'm sorry, but it had to go.) I do what I want when I want.
Life does not suck, and I actually rarely miss being in a relationship. Until, that is, Valentine's Day rolls around and everywhere I go I find crap that seems to exist for the simple purpose of reminding me that other people have ... partners.
And I have ... a cat.
In the interest of complete disclosure, I should probably confess that I also know that it's better this way. I have a long list of personality, um, quirks, that make me really bad at dating. It's why I'm very comfortable as the friend, the sidekick, the partner in crime. I'm an excellent wingperson.
I firmly believe that any "holiday" that makes me -- or anyone else -- wonder if there's something wrong with me because I DON'T have a partner, or makes me feel bad about it -- even for a moment! -- is a holiday that needs to be scrubbed off the calendar.
So do you hear me, Valentine's Day? I already took on a spider -- you're soooo next.
One never knows what will develop. And I've come to think of V's Day as more about love in general, not necessarily romantic love. Michael and I sometimes neglect to give each other anything at all, but I always have cards and candy for the kids and granddaughter.
ReplyDeleteI do hear you about the independence/self-sufficiency thing. I shamefully confess to having let my husband be "The Grownup" who fixed everything, took care of finances, etc. all these years (35! OMG). Then he moved to a different state for work nearly two years ago and I started learning to do for myself. Step One, if you can believe it, was pumping my own gas. I'd never bothered. Michael always filled up my car. Since then I've dealt with dead furnaces, cranky printers, a stubborn 17 year old boy who wouldn't do any homework at all, shoveling snow, getting two stray starlings out of our laundry room, and just today, figuring out where the windshield fluid reservoir is in my Tucson. (It was new last spring and I've never needed to refill it until this morning!) There is nothing quite like that feeling of I CAN DO THIS. Very empowering.
So, beware, spiders! Danielle's in da house.