Oh, god - it's that day again tomorrow.
I have a well-known rant about Valentine's Day, quite the little party piece. I loathe the event from the bottom of my heart.
I loathe not just the tacky commercialization of it (or the increasingly onerous expense... although that can be a factor), but even more the fact that it is in so many cases a form of institutionalized insincerity. A significant proportion (perhaps a majority) of the people who will be exchanging expensive gifts and bandying "I wuv you"s about tomorrow will be doing so almost entirely out of peer pressure - or fear of repercussions from their partner - and not because of any genuine sentiment. Even if genuine sentiment is there, it is easily drowned by all the knee-jerk "romance" required of the day. As far as I am concerned, it is nothing but a farrago of fake emotion.... for people who are incapable of any real romance or spontaneity on the other 364 days of the year.
Naturally, this is an unpopular viewpoint - and I apologise to any of you who may be anticipating a day of ecstatic happiness with your loved one.
Luckily for me, I have seldom been in the position of actually having a girlfriend on St Valentine's Day. And this year is no different!
However, this is a very good time of the year to be single. Partly because other singletons frequently feel the loneliness of their status (some poor souls even feel it as a stigma) more acutely around this annual lurve-fest..... and go out rampantly on the pull to try to rectify the situation. Even more because many of the couples who have followed the (decades old!) conventions of celebration find their relationship strained to breaking point by all the forced lovey-doveyness. Walk past any crowded (and price-gouging) restaurant tomorrow evening and take a peek in the windows: feel the tension in the air, watch the break-ups coalescing over the sickly chocolate puds....
A few weeks post-Valentine's is an ideal time to stop being single. Such at least is my hope!
2 comments:
"A few weeks post-Valentine's is an ideal time to stop being single. Such at least is my hope!"
LOL... you already have someone in mind, don't you! I've seldom heard anyone say so confidently the time when they plan to "stop being single", particularly so recently after a breakup...
I'll take it as a sign that you are doing well and managing the your recent love lost well enough. :)
No, I don't have anyone in mind. I'm just trying to cultivate a more 'optimistic' outlook.
The Artist is not a 'lost love'... just an embryonic proto-relationships that appeared for a while to have some promising possibilities.... but didn't. Nothing much to 'get over' there.
Actually, one of the things that held me back from 'falling' properly for The A was that I was never fully able to cast off my predilection for the previous frontrunner in the Froog Love Stakes. But that was someone I had known for 6 months or more prior to The A coming along, and in all that time she'd only spoken to me a handful of times, and not always very civilly. She is a friend, of sorts, but very DIFFICULT to get along with.
I've had quite a giddy infatuation with her for 9 or 10 months now, but accepted some time ago that it was DOOMED.... so I don't think I will be looking there to end my singlehood. Perhaps the one lasting benefit of my dalliance with The Artist is that I made a commitment to her, determined to focus on trying to develop that relationship and to disregard all other temptations. I wasn't quite able to expunge the former infatuation from my mind, but I did consciously IGNORE it for some time - and in that time, its hold on me has grown weaker, I think. I am - just about - over it now.
So.... a clean slate, and fresh opportunities!!
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