VD Rant

First off let me say how very much I loathe Valentine’s Day. Not that I’m against demonstrating love, quite the opposite. I think you should say it if you feel it – a lot. You should squeezey hug everyone you feel compelled to hug, you should hold hands with kids, aging parents, girlfriends, boyfriends pretty much whoever is standing near you. Like Christmas, love shouldn’t just get squished into one tiny day after which we can dust our hands, pshew and think ourselves safe for another year.

I’m not sure where that loathing started. But having all my coupled friends push their relationship lurve right into my eternally single craw year after year kinda makes me wanna hurl…..and rebel. I’m glad you’re happy. I just wonder about the motivation, especially among women, to talk about their respective VD and how thoroughly and epically romantic it was. Really? Do you forget I know you guys or what!?! I blame the sugar coma from all the candy. I know real love is none of this hearts and flowers bullshit that has become the VD carnival freakshow. Real love is what happens in the moments we would never share publicly on Facebook or brag about to co-workers. Moments where we are too weak to hold ourselves at the center. Moments where we explode, implode, where we collapse, where we fall down. Real love is sharing those moments with someone else and trusting them to hold the center for us, for just a moment, until we can pull the pieces back together. There, in that nakedness, we give someone an opportunity to see us unadorned and without crutches.

Yesterday, being the hearty swoony holiday started as just another day for me. I’m not sure when I felt the edges of me start to fray. Maybe it was when Kelly started grilling me about why I am still single at 50. Didn’t I WANT to be in a relationship? Me: No I wanna die alone and sad just like I have every night in my dreams for the last 30 years. Thanksforasking. Nah – that’s what I WISH I had said in response to such a question. Maybe it was listening to Adele’s 21 and the Dixie Chicks’ Taking the Long Way Home back to back while I did some mindless repetitive work. Maybe it was all my FB friends trying to shove their made up VD happiness down my throat yet again this year. One can only swallow so much shit before the gag reflex is engaged. Either real vomit, or in this case, word vomit. All I know is that something broke loose. That sense of having stood in the same gym line for 30 years waiting to be chosen, to belong to a tribe larger than one, and eternally being passed over for someone else. Nothing working to make me noticed to those doing the choosing. Not flailing my arms, not screaming Hey, look at me, doing hurkey jumps all while balancing a full glass of pinot grigio without spilling a drop. Standing there staring at my Chucks as people get paired up and trying to make sense of it. To understand the WHY. Always the beautiful ones chosen first, then the fun ones, one by one until it’s just me and the girl who eats her own boogers. I’m afraid one day even she will go, that I will be found less desirable than the booger eater. I am no less beautiful, no less smart, no less funny, and a great deal less broken than many of those who went before me. Again I come back to WHY?

It’s a rhetorical question y’all. Albeit a shitty recurring one