Loathe would be the most correct verbal form of my hatred for Valentine's Day.
It's consumerist, materialistic, and puts enormous amounts of pressure on everyone involved.
---What does she expect? What does her best friend expect? What if she does something for me but I don't do enough for her? What if her best friend's boyfriend does something crazy romantic and I didn't come up to par? What if there's a glitter cannon mixup and chocolate syrup comes gushing out instead and she's wearing her new dress and it gets all ruined and she starts to cry and there's mascara everywhere and oh my gosh we're out in public and she's gonna hate me forever and won't even let me scoop up some of the chocolate off her arm with a pretzel?!?!
You get my point.
And, even if a girl (such as myself) truly is not a fan of large romantic gestures, nobody will believe her because it'll seem like a cover-up for her actually really, really wanting a romantic gesture. What.
V-Day has also historically been for me a day of bad news. There was a space of about four years there where something legitimately tragic happened on Valentine's Day.
So, I've held a grudge against it. In my mind, not unwarranted.
This was even to the extent that I cancelled Valentine's Day last year. Cancelled it. As in, I didn't even see my now ex on the day.
I've had a lot of time for reflection since I moved to NI in September (by that I mean that I have thought through everything on God's green Earth for lack of something better to do with my ungodly amounts of free and alone time). During that time, VDay and I have had an all-out.
It's amazing to me how many of life's decisions and revisions are driven by a deep deep rooting in fear.
For this day, there's a fear of not measuring up to expectations, of having expectations and being disappointed, of being vulnerable enough to let yourself be loved in unnecessary ways. It's what I talked about once in my definition of intimacy.
Intimacy as that moment of tension, that point at which you're dancing on the edge and could either fall to your death or jump to a higher ledge.
When I realized at what depth my hatred really did stem from terror and how much I was denying myself as well as other people an opportunity for relational growth, I owed VDay some reconsideration and an apology.
Still not a fan of the gross spectacle it has become, nor am I cozy with being fussed over in almost any capacity, but I recognize that there is some intrinsic value in its existence, if not solely its history.
For that reason, Valentine's Day, you are safe from my slander and cancellation tenancies. We can now be friends.
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