Happy Valentine's Day!

People often ask me what I think about Valentine’s Day and I think they expect me to go “ack! p’tui! I hate pink and gooey sentiment and cheap chocolate!”
While all those things are true, though, I love true sentiments, excellent chocolate, and the fact that we HAVE A HOLIDAY SPECIFICALLY ABOUT LOVE. Why wouldn’t I love that? We have how many holidays that are about war? Death? A bunch. We have exactly one holiday which is expressly about love and about appreciating the people you love, and that’s today.
Now, while I think it would be best if people were always so open and free with their emotions that saying “I love you” every single day would be a matter of course, I know not everyone lives in the utopia that I do. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to say or when. There are times when love hurts. But on Valentine’s Day everyone has permission to say it, to express it. Some people need that permission. I don’t begrudge them a holiday that gives it to them.
Yes, I’m the one who told my high school boyfriends that if they ever brought me flowers I was breaking up with them immediately. Why? What I told them, actually, was this: 1) I wasn’t a “girly girl” and if they were going to treat me like one we should not be dating. 2) If they ever felt they had to use flowers as a way to say something, anything, that they felt they couldn’t just TELL ME, then the relationship was already lost. So it wasn’t the flowers themselves I objected to. It was the stupid ways that flowers were often used that I didn’t want to be a party to.
You’ll note I never told them not to get me chocolate, though. I’m not crazy.