Hate Valentine's Day?
Melanie T. Lim

DO YOU hate Valentine’s Day? If you do, you can’t be blamed.

This is the day almost guaranteed to make everyone feel insecure, inadequate or unloved—whether you’re alone or in love, perennially attached or recently detached, in a long, sleepy relationship that promises to go nowhere or in a new one that’s making you dizzy with delight.

Those who are alone feel rejected. Those who are in love are often disappointed. Why did he choose pink over red? Why didn’t he get me my favorite flowers? Why didn’t I get any flowers, at all? Is his affection waning? Is he trying to tell me something? Am I being dense here? Is there someone else? Has that dreaded moment of abandonment finally come?

Yes, Valentine’s Day is almost guaranteed to make everyone psychotic. And the day doesn’t even have to fall on a full moon.

For this is the day that seems to scream to those who have no one: YOU ARE ALONE! By some grand design, it is as if a neon sign finds its way to your house and hangs outside your door to conspicuously announce to everyone passing through—occupant of this dwelling: DATELESS and DESPERATE!

And yet, this is also the day when you realize the one you are with may not be the one you should be with for the rest of your life because he shamelessly asks you the day before the most romantic day of the year, what he got you last year.

This day is the defining moment for many relationships—the day when expectations rise higher than regular and disappointments drown faster than usual. As for the recently detached, perennially unattached or wanting to so desperately detach, this is the day when all our miseries are somehow magnified.

Still, why hate Valentine’s Day?

Why must we love if love cannot last? Because love does not have to be eternal to make a difference in our lives forever. To know that love cannot last is no cause not to celebrate. The fact that love exists, at all, is cause enough to celebrate. To love is a blessing. To be loved back is a gift. But to be loved forever is a tad supernatural.

I used to hate Valentine’s Day. Today though, albeit still alone but rarely lonely at over 40, I just can’t shore up enough energy to hate a day with so much passion as I did when I was alone, lonely and 20.

But I didn’t know then what I know now—that solitude is bliss and loneliness is a blessing. That you don’t have to be alone to be lonely as you don’t have to have a date to be happy. That to be alive, happy and healthy, to be productive, contented and free, to live a life of significance—are reasons enough to celebrate Valentine’s Day—more than being with someone significant.

So go out there and have a ball if you must. As for me—I’ll be home sipping my frappuccino and smiling for reasons I will never have the gall to write about.

(sunstarcebucolumnist@yahoo.com)