Another Valentine’s Day

Look at us. Another Valentine’s Day. A day appointed by commercialism for love and affection.
Don’t worry, this is not a bitter post. Today is a holiday like other fanciful celebration days created to implore feeling and to generate revenue. I enjoy those days despite circumstance, and I see no use in fighting this one.

This Valentine’s Day I find myself single, in my mid-twenties and living in a state I did not grow up in. Generally speaking, I’m happy. Happiness is a fluctuating feeling though. It flows like the water from the tap. And much like that convenient stream, it can be turned off just as easily. As I’ve gotten older, I have learned not to cling to the idea that I am to be happy. Instead, I let life flow over me—taking what comes with it and finding the joy where I can. Days like today make me especially grateful for that lesson.   

A day for love. That is sort of a pretty thought when you really think about it. In this crazy mixed up illusion of life, the higher ups still thought enough of the truth to grace us with at least one day where we are to reflect on the love our life has found. Sure, it’s probably more so they can sell us over-priced candy and flowers that will die in three days of purchase, but the sentiment is still there when you look for it.

Personally, I love the idea of love. The connection your heart makes to something or someone that fills you only the way that love can. An emotion so powerful that our brains release chemicals just to alert us that we are being overtaken by something so real and true. Today, I am grateful for love. I am grateful I know what it feels like to be engulfed in the swell of tenderness. I am thankful for having had the chance to express softly and to give deeply. I appreciate love, like happiness, for not existing in a linear form. Love is like magic. You don’t have to see it to know it’s real. You can feel it given to you in different packages from different senders with different conceptions. In that sense, love is really everywhere and in everything.

Valentine’s Day seems to be one of those days where being in love outweighs and disrupts the routine of omnipresent love. Like the love from your friends and family, your pets or even your social media followers are not important enough loves to consecrate on such a sacred day. Couples around the world feel the pressure to make love a performance for one day out of the year—putting metaphorical saran wrap over their relationship in order to provide a shiny plastic view of what love means to anyone who will look. Now I’m not saying anything is wrong with romantic vacations or jewelry in little blue boxes, but I have to wonder at what point is love manifesting as obligation in the ritual of Valentine’s Day. Like are we prioritizing genuine love on days that aren’t so pretty?

I have been the culprit of performative affection. Inciting the gaze of external approval, I have put the red bow on a broken gift, and I have paid the price for that deception more than I care to admit. That said, I will share a more recent blow very soon. Today is a day for love, so I won’t ruin that with the results of actions that I brought upon myself.
Moreover, my experience with bandaging love in order to feel love tells me that it is easy to sit in the ugly side of desire and I know I am not the only one who has. I think we have all, those of us who have loved before, smiled for the picture in between arguments and promises of leaving. Some of us might partake in some of that today…
But hey, we all have to learn at our own pace.  

I think for me this year—as someone who has taken down their saran wrap and realized that what it was covering was not the kind of love worth the holiday habit, I am more introspective. I am living in a space of questions that only I can answer. How do I want to be loved? How do I give love? How can I be sure I am loving myself to my fullest capabilities? How much of me is too much to give? How can I be ok with walking away and staying away when I need to?
I’m doing that work that popular tweets on Twitter recommend you do in order to feel content. That said, I have realized the journey in love is largely a perspective-based task. How I see my life is truly how it is. Choosing to notice the sun despite the clouds is a choice, and one no one can make for me.

So, on Another Valentine’s Day, I can check my perspective and decipher what it is that I want to see. And I want to see bliss. I choose to see people who are experiencing the traditional holiday practice as deserving. I wish them the happiness that they portray, and I hope they are introspective enough to know if it is truly worth the habit themselves. If they deem it not, I wish them the strength to remove their own plastic façade and to venture forward in loving themselves.

I choose to acknowledge the various forms of love that currently live in my own life. The love from myself to myself—as I continue to progress in my relationship with me, I will do so with celebration and honor because I am deserving of all the fun on my own first. I recognize the love from my father—caring and frightened for my well-being. A person who wants the best for me and who offers me love in the best way he knows how. That love is pure, and I am thankful for it. I see the love from people who support me. With encouraging words, to Friday night hangouts, to likes on social media—I am blessed to be seen in the light I offer, and I relish in the promise of growing brighter knowing that agency will smile at the gleams. Today I choose to look past the torn saran wrap around me and into what will be real in the future. In short, I choose me. I choose happiness.

I wish that for you too. You who are reading this. Thank you for taking time out to listen to me. I hope that something I said has resonated enough with you that you allow it to grow you. I wish that you move forward in your own life with love and acceptance. Not just today, Another Valentine’s Day, but for the rest of your life. I pray confidence and joy into your life—so much so that you overflow with it and share some with those around you. You are so deserving, as am I. May God (in the highest form you identify them) protect you forevermore.

Happy Valentine’s Day