Be Your Own Valentine
Should you be lucky enough to have someone in your life who buys in to the commercialism of Valentine’s Day, the rest of us will not accept complaints when that pound of chocolate dipped salted caramels happily finds a home on your hips (oh my who thought of these delicious bad boys??). And no blaming the giver either, for the last minute supermarket flower bouquets. There is a reason the front of the store looks like a queen’s funeral.
I feel bad for the guy/gal who is pressured into giving hearts, flowers, jewels or more, in fear of coming off as unromantic. And I get more upset toward the person on the other end who does the pushing. V-Day shouldn’t be a day of stress or forced expressions of affection.
Lest you label me a lonely single lady or a romantic curmudgeon, this is not the case. I have a longtime mate. We eloped and married on Valentine’s Day, so there. Save your oohs and ahhs. That’s a story for another day. It was more Rich Dad, Poor Dad than an over-the-top wedding event that took years of planning. I also have nothing against weddings; I love weddings. In a nutshell we wanted to buy a house and the bank wanted us to be married before “giving” us a loan. We went off and got married, and then the bank turned us down.
Suffice to say we’ve sifted through the early, gooey years (and eventually got a home) and forged a unified and a more practical view point of unrequited love. It’s our style, and it works just fine. He sent flowers once and charged them to our credit card that I paid. Commercialized Valentine’s Day sort of went out of it for me there.
I get romance every day. He brings us coffee in bed each morning, unless I’m off on a writing retreat (like now) and then we have coffee over the phone. He’s the King of the Manicured Lawn and I get to enjoy neatly mowed grass and sharply edged flower beds. He’ll crawl under a creepy deck to retrieve whatever I’ve lost, climb up a rickety ladder to swat a hornet’s nest, fill up the gas grill tank and shovel a very long driveway packed with snow so we can all get out. That’s just the beginning of what my Valentine does for me on a regular basis. Sweet, consistent, reliable, dependable, stable, sometimes semi-crazy love. This is one lucky gal. I know it. I appreciate it.
On my end, I take care of the domestic side of the house, meaning to this day, my husband believes there exists in this universe an Underwear Fairy and she washes and stores his boxer briefs like sushi rolls. Let him have his fantasy.
But for the women and men out there who love the LOVE “holiday” yet feel sad about being alone, buy yourself a box of the very best chocolates and a nice big bunch of flowers. Find or make yourself a card and write a beautiful message of self-love and appreciation. From you, to you. You deserve it.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio