V-Day: A Retrospective

It's my first Valentine's Day with a special someone -- my darling Chris -- and I've got a night class. Pssh! After years of fantasizing about having a boyfriend on V-Day and one year of supposedly being over the idea, I've got my wish and we're doing nothing.

But I don't want to complain. I've done my fair share of that over the years...

Last year, despite having my essay "Learning to love 'me' and not 'we'" published in The Temple News, I felt quite lonely on Valentine's Day.

I love myself, OK? I really do. But I miss not having someone special in my life. Someone to see all the things I love about me and to love them too.

God, and every time I log onto Facebook -- which I should just stop doing because it seems to do nothing but depress me lately -- I see friends of mine who seem to be making leaps and bounds in their lives. They're introducing boyfriends to their families for the first time, hanging out with new groups of people and doing all other manner of new, exciting stuff.

And I feel static, unchanging. My life doesn't feel like it's advancing.

 This really was nothing new. The year before, I wrote about the holes I'd discovered in the "large, scary concept of love."

The world, or at least America is obsessed with love, and I question the actuality of "love."

My doubt arises from the logical conclusion that love could very well be a simple illusion, created by some natural chemistry or physicality, to make people couple up and procreate. I want to believe in familial love and love between friends, but there are times when I doubt these as well. That old phrase "Sometimes love just isn't enough" has proved true again and again for people, otherwise it wouldn't be a much-used maxim.

Before that, I'd only ever once gotten a V-Day gift from a guy -- and it came from the guy I was stupid enough to steal away from a friend and who ended up dating another friend of mine.

Through all of this, if I've learned just one thing, it would be this: It's sweeter to do nothing with your beloved than to spend the day pining for a special someone.

images from weheartit and my MacBook