I have been single for 21 Valentine’s Days.
Granted, the first 12 or so didn’t really matter, I was a kid. Even then, in high school it wasn’t a huge deal, but once I hit college, it was a big deal. A very big deal.
My freshman year I saw a guy carry his girlfriend around all day. Yes, all day. Yes, you read that right, carry, as in her feet were not on the ground. How do I know it was an all day thing?
Simple. While I was trudging the slow walk of a single 18-year-old girl with a heavy backpack, I passed them three or four times. He had her backpack on with his own and was carrying her like a guy does in movies. I wanted to trip him.
My sophomore year I was in Spain, studying abroad. Spanish is the language of love, and Spain the country of PDA-to-the-max so Valentine’s Day rolled around and merely meant the girls on the street were sporting red lace thongs instead of black, and everything else was as normal.
Last year, My suite bought flowers for each other. Put together into one big vase, we had a really nice bouquet, and the half price candy from Walmart also helped.
This year, I don’t have flowers, my mother’s Valentine’s candy for me won’t arrive until Thursday, my life in general is skewed something crazy, and I’m sick of seeing couples. Everywhere.
I feel like all but a handful of my friends are dating, engaged, or married, and are off being couples on the over-commercialized day of Saint Valentine. And I’m jealous.
I currently have a love/hate relationship with Valentine and his lousy-but-lovely day.
You’ve got to understand something about me for the statement I just made to make sense. Bear with me and I will explain it to you.
I love romance, romantic comedies, spur-of-the-moment dates, just because flowers, chocolates when you’re sad, chick flicks, happy endings, and everything in between.
I hate sitting on the sidelines watching my friends and classmates, and former friends and classmates living out their own modern day fairytales, and I realize that sounds jaded.
Trust me when I say I’m truly happy for them, I love that they’ve all been so richly blessed. I just can’t help but sit here and wonder, when is it my turn?
And yes, there are guys I probably could have dated –if I’d dropped an already lower-than-it-used-to-be standard. (It’s got 6 things right now. Christian, Funny, Smart, Taller-than-me, Dark Hair, and a Love of Travel. That’s it. I feel that that isn’t unreasonable. I really don’t think I need to dumb it down or change it.) So yes, I’m technically single by choice on my 21st Valentine’s Day, but is that really even a choice? Hold out for a guy who fits a simple list or date whatever is on the street? Fail and not cool.
So for right now, I hate Valentine’s Day. I hate it. I love the idea, and the tradition, but I hate the practicing of it. Of feeling like there is something wrong with me for the 24 hours a year that everyone I know (or so it seems) are paired up in the little cutesy couples I write about in my short stories, or wondering what I’m doing wrong that I don’t get my mini-happy-ending, etc. etc.etc…
For right now, I’m glad it ends in an hour, that the pink and red and white roses will die and be thrown out, that the teddy bears will lose their bows and get worn down on someone else’s pillow, and that the candy will be eaten. Because that means I have 364 days left to be my usual self, to be okay with being single (well, mostly okay with it. Let’s face it, I’d love it if a guy, just one, would step up to the plate and say “hey. You should date me.” And yes, I may or may not have a guy in mind, or at least…a type of guy, or a list…pick one. It’s potentially right).
Because right now, the only thing wrong with little old me, is a little old day named after a dead guy and the overcommercialization that has turned it into every taken girl's dream and this single girl's nightmare.
~Nanda
No comments:
Post a Comment