"Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap." Joel Barish, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Every other person I talked to last week wasn't, per se, outright embittered it was Valentine's day. They just had a more apparent feeling of malaise than usual. Hearing stories about relationships that strained to make it past last Thursday, failed engagements, the stress of long-distance relationships, I began to wonder why I myself wasn't sulking or indignant about being single on Valentine's day. Maybe because I just associate with bitter intellectual people. But the holiday never meant anything really significant to me except another example of crass commercialization destroying the true meaning of a Catholic holiday (I damn you all if you do that to Palm Sunday!!), so I never saw giving tokens of affection as being limited to, or the duty of, Valentine's Day. Also I'm fine not being attached to anyone right now and just playing the field. I know (or suspect I know) of what I'm missing out in not being in a relationship - the confusion, the dizzying initial happiness, and possible isolation, regret, hope and future. Yet I'd rather work on being sane and grounded myself and not having to force that responsibility on any new love interest.
Talking with old Sports editor Joe from the Maroon, we recalled what probably is the most saccharine thing i ever did for a girl, which was have Joe deliver her a birthday cake (actually a cupcake with a candle on it) on my behalf as a surprise. His version of the story was that he was madly in love with the girl, even though he had just met her two minutes before he delivered the cupcake. I resolved my next romantic gesture will involve a boombox and Peter Gabriel.
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