Being Single On Valentine's Day Still Sucks
By Thoughtis
Last Valentine’s Day, I woke up with chills running through my entire body and a fever. At first I thought this was just my body playing a prank on me. Am I allergic to Valentine’s Day? Am I allergic to a day that celebrates monogamy and serious relationships? I mean, maybe I was, because after five years of avoiding any real sickness, I came down with a three-day flu on Valentine’s Day that rendered me immobile.
What transpired next seemed straight out of a Sex and the City episode. Remember when Samantha gets super sick and is like “JK, I’m done sleeping around. I just need a boyfriend who can bring me soup and deal with my diarrhea”? She realizes that she has no one to really rely on which, let’s be honest, is a big contributing factor into why we seek out a partner to begin with. When our parents die and our friends start their own families, we need to have someone who can take us to doctor’s appointments and not care if we start pooping our pants.
Being bedridden in my studio apartment on a day that promotes togetherness and security felt like a big “Screw you!” from the universe. Prior to my getting the flu, I didn’t pay any real attention to Valentine’s Day. I was planning on going to work and meeting up with friends after to maybe have a “GAY” moment at my favorite bar, Metropolitan. But since I didn’t have enough energy to lift my arm, let alone potentially stick my tongue in some stranger’s mouth, I had to deal with me, myself and I on Valentine’s Day.
It’s embarrassing to be affected by this holiday. It’s embarrassing to even be writing this blog post and giving it more attention. Throughout the years, celebrating Valentine’s Day has become so lame in the eyes of the masses that even couples don’t celebrate it. It’s a joke, a symbol of consumerism rather than real love. Intellectually, you know all of this but you still can’t help but feel a little bit of a void if you’re single. It’s easy to laugh it off when you have someone to laugh it off with.
This year, I hopefully won’t be getting the flu and I’ll be able to do things like hang out with friends and kiss someone if I want to. I’m approaching Valentine’s Day with only 30% dread and anxiety but I resent that it’s even making me a little bummed out. Nothing annoys me more than the cliche single person eating chocolates and watching rom-coms with their other single friend while guzzling wine. It’s not a cute look for anyone, especially when you’re 25 and your life is no longer an episode of Sweet Valley High. When I was 16, my best friend and I did the whole “Let’s eat chocolate and watch John Hughes movies” thing and it was fine because we were, um, virgins and I was still pretending to have crushes on vagina. (Actually it wasn’t fine because I ended up eating so much chocolate that I vomited during the credits of Sixteen Candles.) But now things are different. I’m not in college anymore and people are shacking up in serious ways. All of a sudden, you look around and everyone is in serious relationships. Being single is a little bit more pronounced. You’re the other.
Anyway, I don’t really know what my point was. I started out this point being like, “This is not going to be a sad Valentine’s Day. You are an adult and, therefore, invincible to Hallmark holidays!” But, oops, I failed. Valentine’s Day bums me out. There. I said it. Bye.