Dear Valentine’s Day,
Fuck right off.
You heard me. I don’t need you. And no, it’s not because I’m single. That’s actually the last reason I’m tossing you out like so much garbage this year. It’s because you never really fit the largeness of love in the first place…that life affirming, enduring thing we all strive to achieve and keep.
“Build a wall around your heart and never love again,” suggested
a friend of mine after a particularly trying break-up. It was piss poor advice. And thank God I never took it. You see, I’m romantic, to the bone. And nothing external could ever change
it. Not the betrayal of a cheating
partner, not a lonely bed on a cold winter night and especially not the fact
that I’m single on the candiest, rosiest, chocolatiest holiday of the year.
I love love. And I’d go further to say my one true
vice is women, and loving them. I
can give up booze, red meat, and eschew gambling…I can avoid over indulgence in
sweet things and generally lead a sober life. But when I fall in, I fall in deep. A haze sets in, emails go unattended, I
lose touch with friends. I forget
to eat. My every thought becomes
this person. Who they are, what
they are thinking, what they must think when waking, then walking through this
world. And when this love is
unrequited, I suffer the suffering of a thousand broken hearts. I walk with a broken back. But when a new love is reciprocated it
is as if every winnowing pop song is my soundtrack; how sweet and simple life
is. Such joy. I become a floating thing.
And I want to buy those greeting cards filled with feathery
sentiments and hand them out to passersby. In love, each day presents itself like a luscious poem,
rhyming with synchronicity. And
because of it I want to go to museums with my lover and gaze at art…discuss and
drink all that beauty. I want to lay on sandy beaches with her, with silent
fingers laced. I want to watch her
face as she watches the sun set. I want to love her from the inside of my body
to every last inch of the outside of her body and back again.
I do not despise Valentine’s Day because I love less. I despise it because I love too
much. And not being in love with
one person in particular, well, it’s ok…you see, my eyes are wide open to this
vast, warm world around me, conspiring towards complexity and fulfillment. I’m reminded that I can also be just as
in love with myself. Sit on sandy
beaches gazing at sunsets alone, synapses firing, alive with all my senses…experiencing
it all within the framework of my body and not that of another. And this feeling can be just as
sublime. Just as ‘in love’ as
anything.
So Valentine’s Day, you misguided old fool, I’m tossing you
aside because you diminish love. And
don’t we all know that by now? Cos
love isn’t just candy hearts and diamond tennis bracelets. Love is also a simple act in this complex time and space… and in
one breath or a lifetime or a nighttime we can experience the true expanse of
the emotion. Love is a touch and
it’s a feeling and it’s 3 fucking D. It’s whatever it is in any particular moment. And yes, perhaps it’s a plush bear
holding a sateen heart, “I wuv you,” in cursive. Maybe it’s a bag of oranges.
So this Thursday I am going to pause to reflect on love, not
because it's Valentine’s Day but it's because it’s a day. Any day. And each day, I let it in. And each day, if I choose,
I make ceremony with sunsets and chocolate and wine and human touch. Or just the touch of my own two hands, laced
silently. And I understand that this love
is enduring. And not just one day. It is all days.
So fuck off, you.
But don’t forget…I love you,
Helen
