Valentine' Day in Reflection

As you know, I set a goal for myself this year.  I wouldn't be sour and snide about the holiday. Honestly, there is no point is being negative about it any more.  Instead, I decided to Bask in the Love.  You know what? It worked.

So here are my highlights from my Valentine's Day celebrations:

• I posted on Facebook and invited people to tell me how they met the one they love.  I got some really good responses.  Every time I read one of the stories, I smiled. Even if it was just a simple thing, I smiled. And you know what? Part of why I smiled was because I could tell the responders were getting to relive that moment that changed so much for them.
  
• I later asked people to tell me about their favorite Valentine's Day memory.  One of the neatest responses I got from this came from a friend who's husband is blind. She told me that when the first got married, they didn't have much money and decided to just give gifts from the heart.  He'd expressed how he missed driving and so she cleared a parking lot for him and let him drive around. She sat next to him and guided him to keep them safe. I think this story will always stick with me.
• Two of my friends wrote their own posts about the holiday. One wrote about other gifts from the heart. Even with its own bit of snark, it was a very sweet post and he always has great pictures and videos and stuff.  His follow up post today was mostly nifty pictures. Loved it. Another friend wrote a post about things that really should be shown love on Valentine's Day. I liked this post because I often make speeches to my purses and stuff. When I told her this, she jokingly called me a weirdo.
• I encouraged people to think about those who are without an SA this year and get them a little gift.  I was thinking of widow(er)s, people recently divorced, those who are perpetually single, and the like. I'm not sure how much of this happened, but I did get two bouquets of flowers myself, so I know it worked somewhat.
• I participated in the Inner Beauty Project and wrote a very painful but soul cleansing love letter to myself.  I feel very committed to this glorious idea. I really encourage everyone to do this.
• I helped a friend online come up with a Valentine's Day gift for her boyfriend.  I made quite a few suggestions to her and I think she took a couple of them.
• Tonight, my roomie and I did our traditional eating of Valentine's Day candy after pasta. Hah, I almost left that as "paste." Totally changes the idea. This is very important to me, as all traditions with the roommate are.  Neither of us celebrate any holiday in normal ways, as we didn't have normal childhoods. What we do with them always makes me happy.
• While looking through the pictures of people's gifts on Facebook, I liked them, and I meant it.  Instead of being selfish and sulking about the holiday, I was happy for people because they got pretty things. Things that made them feel special and loved. That is beautiful. 
• My sister-in-law saved all the broken crayons from the last year and helped my nephew to make hearts out of them for his classmates.  They looked really cool and I complimented her on them.

Wow. Look at that. And I may have even missed some stuff. But seriously. LOOK AT THAT. I took this holiday I rarely give a care about, often just am annoyed with, and turned it into a real celebration for me. Something that moved me, changed me, gave me stories, strengthened my ties with people, strengthened my ties with myself.

And all this, just because I choose to alter my perspective.  Happy Valentine's Day. 

VD and the Happy Bubbles

When you're a kid, Valentine's Day is just another Candy-Related Holiday.  In this case, candy usually came in two basic forms. The first is candy message hearts, which I think everyone kind of hates . . . but eats anyway. The second is chocolate. Chocolate is good to....questionably good.

Valentine's Day was also a craft related holiday.  A week or so before the actual event, everyone would be asked to bring a box or brown paper lunch bag or something to school.  About half the kids would remember to do this. The rest of the bags would be supplied by teachers.  Said teachers would then pull out the white, red, and shades-of-red construction paper.  We'd all get out our paste and safety scissors and perhaps some markers. There would always be those two or three kids who would spend the next few minutes getting high off the fumes.

I wonder where those kids are now . . .

Anyway, we would cover our boxes or bags with the construction paper (often poorly) and then start cutting out various sized valentines to put on it.  We'd add our names and a place for the valentines to be slipped in. Often we'd make the hole large enough to handle any possible candies that might be given as well. Everyone always liked the kids with the overly ambitious mothers.

For the most part, everyone received the same valentine. Flat cards with some picture on the front and the To: and From: on the back. Most often, these weren't even filled in. The kids were handed a box of the cards and told to stick them in each slot.  Everyone got the same thing.   So in elementary school, no one had any reason to hate Valentine's Day.

The changes came in the later grades, as people began to think about things in much more basic and individual terms. With middle school, there was a lot of secrets and intrigue. People would receive Valentine's Day gifts of candy or flowers, often from admirers. I think in all of our lives, Anonymous is never more sexy than during middle school.  The whole three years could have been one big masquerade ball and we would have been happy . . . actually, as bad as most of us were at putting on makeup, it probably was a lot like that.

Valentine's Day in high school was, depending on your station, either very fun or a day of hell.  Okay, I guess that was true for ANY day of high school, but this one especially. The hour before lunch time, the secretary would come onto the intercom and begin to name off everyone who had gifts to be picked up, stating that this would be done again the hour before school let out.

Everyone listened to that intercom with such intensity, hoping for their names to be called. You could see the hope on their faces, wanting the gift so much, no matter what it was. . . . and then the look of either delight or disappointment when the results became clear.  In terms of cruelty, I give that to the first announcement. Hands down.    If you received no gifts on the first list, it was like being cut, but given assurance that you would either get stitches or cut even deeper later in the day.

Those of us, alone and giftless, would walk out of the school on those Valentine's Days and watch the  Beautiful Ones glide to their cars with their bounty.  Roses and other flowers, red, white, and/or shades there in-between of Teddy bears holding freaking hearts, boxes of candy, balloons shaped like valentines, with garish lettering of how much they were adored.

I remember sitting in my car one year, watching as a giddy creature had the daunting task of trying to stuff twelve helium balloons into her car. I told myself that this was just a moment in time and someday, I would be the one with balloons....and that instead of trying to put them in my car, me and Perfect Weird Boyfriend would sit on the ground outside of it, sucking the helium and singing songs to each other while we laughed.

Of course, I never found Perfect Weird Boyfriend.  And over the years, as I watched as even the innocent hurt of high school VD gave way to "get-candy-and-whatever-boyfriend-is-resentful-but-I-give-him-sex" that so many seemed to experience during this holiday, the snark factor rose.  The whole concept became one of bitterness and bile.  After a while, that was more or less what the holiday was for me. Let's face it, I call it VD. That should tell you something.

This isn't to say I don't currently have a tradition with Valentine's Day. My roommate always buys up the most silly and gaudy things he can find and we eat them subversively, like we're stealing them from the mouths of the In-love Ones.  Today he bought mini cupcakes that had pink and red icing and a smattering of tiny hearts on them. They were precious in the most godawful kind of way.

However . . . I'm letting go of my venom and bitterness for the holiday.  Even if Valentine's Day has been a source of pain and rancor for me over the years, I've come to realize that it was only because I was letting it be.

I may not be in a romantic relationship with anyone, but that doesn't mean I can't bask in the love of others.  And so I shall do just this. In fact, I plan on celebrating it, rejoicing in it, spreading as many happy bubbles as I can.

Because, here's the thing . . . most of the stuff in my life that works, are because I found a way to make them work for me. Life is rarely, if ever, an easy fit.  Valentine's Day has never worked for me because I was trying to take it on the terms as described.  That's not how things work for me.

So I'm reinventing how I view it. VD is now me basking in love, no matter who's love it is.  And damn, do I feel good.