With Valentine’s Day recently passing, I have a confession: I have not enjoyed the idea of Valentine’s Day for a while. As a single person, I am filled with dread when I open Instagram and scroll through a disorienting number of ridiculously cute hard launches. After spending the past days helping my friends pick out gifts for their partners, my mind has been running in panicked circles. Am I doomed to be unlucky in love? Why am I suddenly picturing a hypothetical future where, thirty years from now, I walk in on my wife and boss making love on Valentine’s Day?
I think people tend to view Valentine’s Day through an unproductive and unhealthy perspective: We have been conditioned to calculate our self-worth based on whether or not someone gives us a freaking bath bomb on this arbitrary day. Our perspectives on the supposed horrors and shame of being single during Valentine’s Day are largely informed by societal pressures to only think of ourselves as adequate when we have someone to desire and to be desired by. These expectations are particularly dehumanizing for single women in general, or women who are not in heterosexual relationships, as the patriarchy views their existence as justified only through their companionship to men.
Yet, despite my frustration with this dynamic, I can’t deny that some extent of my longing to be included in this holiday is something more personal, something that feels woven into my very being, rather than being solely the byproduct of cultural values. Despite my better self, I can’t help but feel charmed by the images that Valentine’s Day evokes: a date in an old library or a garden, a sappy Instagram caption full of poetry and prose, and a non-biodegradable plush or a bouquet of flowers, grown in a climate-controlled greenhouse that finds a temporary place in a shared apartment. Oh, god, why am I kicking my feet right now?
Yes, I know that Valentine’s Day is a commercialized spectacle that catalyzes environmental ruins and materialism in our society, but gosh darn it, I want to participate in the rampant consumerism! I want to conspicuously post my partner online! Monetize my emotions! Buy Squishmallows! I’M AN ANIMAL!
Not having a partner to do that for gives me a tinge of sadness, similar to what Pat Robinson must feel when he remembers that women exist. But, rather than spending the day ruminating on past situationships, I am choosing to reframe my perspective this year. Valentine’s Day isn’t about the relationships we have (or don’t have), but the love we experience in all of its forms. Valentine’s Day should remind us to appreciate and savor our full emotional scope: the joy we find in seeing stray cats and adding to a Smiski collection, the sentimentality and nostalgia we feel when reminiscing about old friends, the enjoyment of a simple routine that we share with a partner, the grief we feel when we no longer have a partner, the beauty we find in our bodies, and the feelings that incentivize us to express our love for ourselves and others — even if that means feeding into the commercialization of Valentine’s Day.
I hope more people reframe their perspectives on Valentine’s Day to view it as a reminder that we are full of love and all the emotions it induces; in the context of all the tragedy in the world right now, giving ourselves a space to feel that love is pretty revolutionary.
