Living Through Valentine's Day

If you are reading this, you made it

So how did your Valentine’s Day go? After all, Valentine’s Day is to a love addict as St. Patrick’s Day is to an alcoholic: It may be a festive celebration for normies, but it’s a potentially lethal trigger for a chosen few.

The biggest problem with Valentine’s Day actually affects regular people as well: expectation. “An expectation is just a resentment under construction,” as the AA oldtimers say. It’s almost impossible to meet a romantic expectation, because it’s almost always a fantasy. And boy, does popular culture feed that fantasy. Everything from a new car with a red bow on top to freezing to death in the North Atlantic to save your sweetheart from drowning. Top that, boyfriend!

A fantasy is by definition all in your head and, despite your fervent wishes, your spouse/partner/crush cannot read your mind. Trust me. In some way, shape or form, your expectation will not be met. Always. Which results in disappointment. Always. So we start that most romantic day disappointed. Always.

“Disappointed” is not a good way to enjoy the most romantic day of the year.

The last time I got a dozen roses for Valentine’s Day they were very fancy and hand-delivered on a Sunday… also they were from a rock’n’roll guitar player, so you know I was the one actually paying the bill for them. One year I got clown shoes. That was actually a pretty good gift. I’ve gotten lingerie, of course, and lingerie that didn’t fit, of course, and when I was young there were silver hearts dangling from silver chains. Silver was inexpensive when I was young. But I’m not really a by-the-calendar kind of gal. Why take your mother to brunch on Mother’s Day when the restaurant is packed? Take her on the first day of spring. That’s a nice day for brunch.

Your mileage (and mother) may vary.

So I hope you had a nice Valentine’s Day (which, remember, honors a saint who was beaten and beheaded for the crime of marrying people.) I got together with a bunch of friends whose company I enjoy. You would have gotten a kick out of the text thread deciding on a movie; we could have launched a moon mission. (I was pimping for Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, but we ended up at Hamnet. It was fine once Shakespeare started writing the dialog. You couldn’t pay me to see Wuthering Heights.) I hope your February 14th passed without too much expectation or too much disappointment.

And I hope your alcoholic friend wakes up on March 18th without a hangover.