Valentine’s Day

Last week was Valentine’s Day. It’s not a holiday I really care about. Honestly, I think it’s more for elementary school parties than anything else. I don’t feel sad that I don’t have a partner right now. Certainly not because everyone is advertising chocolates and flowers. It’s just a day, and it doesn’t define me.

And yet… I found myself feeling blue. I was a bit mopey and low energy. I kept catching myself having little fantasies of receiving flowers at work, or a cute little valentine from a secret admirer. I even wondered briefly what X was doing for the twatwaffle.

This brief, and now rare, wondering reminded me of all the Valentine’s Days we’d had together. How anti-climactic they were. How I always wanted more.

By the time I left school, I got in the car and had a good cry. Then I drove home and spent my evening moving slowly in the house, writing and thinking. I though a lot about how expectations from outside, from society, about what Valentine’s Day is really do seep in, whether you want them to or agree with them or not. But I also thought a lot about why I always felt let down by this holiday with X. The conclusion I’ve come up with has to do with the other 364 days of the year. I think I always put my hopes on the holiday for a grand gesture, because gestures throughout the year were few and far between. Because I always felt last on his priority list. Because so often I felt like an afterthought.

The holiday seems to have some weird, lurking expectations for me. I spent the day trying to work through them. But in the end, it was just a day and I moved through it the best I could. Next year, hopefully I’ll be ready for those sneaky expectations.