Valentine's Day, that day that comes once a year that seems to have two purposes, (1) to make single people miserable, and (2) to allow shallow people an outlet for being mushy and impressing friends by flexing their credit card muscle to give to their partners the most contrived and meaningless expensive shit they possibly can, all the while making those of us on minimum wage feel like unappreciative assholes. Of the holidays, Valentine's Day is by far the most insulting and contrived. I feel I should qualify all this by saying that I did in fact buy presents for my girlfriend today and we are going out tonight. That being said I would like to further explain that we go out often and though the present thing doesn't happen all the time, neither of us need the holiday as an excuse to be nice to one another. Because that is mostly what the holiday is for.
How shallow of a society are we that we need a special day just to do something nice for our friends and significant others? Is saying I love you so hard to do that we need a whole year to work up to it? Why is it that in order to show that you really love someone you must first buy them a Helzburg Diamond? I think it is just because people want to have one more present getting holiday. Evidently birthdays, Christmas, Easter and Halloween aren't enough free shit holidays. But of course the catch is that in order to take part in this trite overdone day, you must first have to have a significant other and if you don't you get to work. Oh yeah, single people have no fucking prayer of having this day off if they work with people who are married/dating/having an illict affair. If you are single and working you get the unimaginable joy of watching happy as shit couples come in doing whatever it is they feel like before settling in to their evenings of marathon circus sex while you sweep up garbage and clean up after their messy asses. The night's activities then become going home and contemplating sucide for about a half an hour before giving up and going the fuck to bed.
Now you may be asking how I can say these things when I am currently in a happy relationship. Well the answer is simple, I didn't turn my brain in at the door when I started dating. I retain the ability to think and communicate without the use of baby talk despite my relationship. If I think something is contrived and stupid, I can still say so. We as a society seem to be down on those of us in relationships and I think the reason is because a whole hell of a lot of people take dramatic IQ plunges as soon as a relationships start. Anyone who doubts me needs only to think of the "he hits me because he cares" friend to see my point. Most people get into relationships and become Gomer Pyle on qualudes all of the sudden. Seemingly intellegent individuals are reduced to mindless yes men and women and there is simply no use talking to them. But here lies a problem.
Single people put a lot of pressure on their dating friends. They don't want to see the mushy stuff. They can't tolerate the sorts of compromises that people make when they are intimately involved with someone else. They grow resentful and take it out on their friends. Now this isn't everyone, but I am going to continue talking like it is because it makes it sound better. The point of this divergent tangent is that I think if people were allowed to be okay with being in relationships and not take a constant load of crap for them, Valentine's Day would fade away because then they would be comfy, satisfied and well adjusted without the need for spontaneous material re-embersment.
At the risk of not making any sense and to wrap up, all I am saying is that people contrive things to compensate for whatever they don't really have. Valentine's Day is that contrivence. If perhaps there was a balance between Honeymoon Period bliss and bearly speaking to each other then the day wouldn't be necessary and your friends wouldn't alienate and feel alienated by you. Romantic relationships are just that: relationships. They must be nurtured and advanced the way any other type of relationship does. They must be constantly in motion and stimulated or they die off. That means personal attention and caring. That is where we fall down, and there are the two sides of the fence. One side is a bad relationship and the other is a sickening relationship and neither are places that are fun to be. Simply put, Valentine's Day is, at bottom, a check written with insufficant funds, a too little to late excuse for not putting any effort in the rest of the year. Valentine's Day is neglect.
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© 1997 bodhili@hotmail.com
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