while my exploitation of instagram today might've seemed like the actions of a bitter and single thirty year old, i assure you, they weren't. i was - as i pointed out, trying to prove a point, yes, but that wasn't it. i can totally see where the confusion might come from, but... that's absolutely not on me. what i was trying to achieve was something akin to a slightly tongue in cheek rebuttal to all those loved up couples insta-bragging and showing off how much they 'like totally love their bae' all over my feed, on a day that was wholly designed to celebrate consumerism, and who fit that holiday mould to a tee.
for as long as i can remember - single or not, i have celebrated valentine's day in a fairly non-traditional way. i don't buy into all the fanfare around it; the idea that we should ensure we tell our partners (or whomever) that we love them on this one set day a year, that there even needs to be a whole day dedicated to this, has always seemed outrageous. but from a cute and kitschy point of view, i fricken love the holiday - with all its pink paper hearts and discounted chocolate and candy and more-than-ever red hearted items of clothing on the shelves, this is a holiday i can get on board with!
in the lead up to the big day this year i even went as far as to see if i could wear hearts on my clothes for the whole week prior to valentine's day in a #ejvvdaywardrobe challenge on instagram that i successfully achieved, with a couple of outfits to spare. from a tacky and promotional angle, i love valentine's day. i love the idea of spending the day with my girlfriends, drinking pink bubbles, eating our weight in chocolate and watching tacky rom-coms. that's how i love to spend my valentine's days usually. other than that, no. i'd be happy to leave all of the tradition at the door.
or so i thought...
ted baker candle c/o house of fraser
i've been seeing a guy for a handful of months now (and i hope he isn't reading this because it's not about him), and he's fairly intuitive; he listens to things i say, notices the small things, and has a magnificent memory for just about everything. now, a blind man could tell how much i love this stupid day, and yet - in the week leading up to it, there was no mention of it. at all. from him. and i can understand for many reasons why that's not even a big deal, because - had he just said somewhere along the way "valentine's is a ridiculous holiday" like most other people i know, then i would know where he stands on it and wouldn't spend my time wondering why he hadn't mentioned it.
ok, so we're not "together" or whatever people are even calling that these days, but i had expected it to be mentioned at some point. and yet, it wasn't. i woke up annoyed. at him, because he hadn't acknowledged my stupid interest in something wholly ridiculous, and at me, because... do you know how crap that made me feel? that he hadn't been intuitive enough to read my mind and work out i wanted him to ask me out for dinner, or buy me a card, or just tell me "happy velentine's day" (which, he actually did. after i asked him to)? craziness, huh? i am a single, strong, clever, independent thirty year old, who does not need validating by anyone else on what is really just one degrading holiday. so why did i care so much that this one person wasn't interested in playing up to my over the top antics? i despair over that question, because i honestly can't figure out the answer.
my best friends are all otherwise occupied this weekend, and he's been really ill - like, cancelled on me twice already this week. so not only did i have no friends to spend the day with, i had no 'valentine' either - much like many of the girls and boys i follow on social media. what i was seeing in my feeds this morning was essentially a 50/50 split of 'gah, valentine's day' and 'yay! valentine's day' posts, and rather than fall helplessly into the more negative of the two, i decided to do something about it and take myself out on a lady date; if i couldn't spend the day spoiling anyone else, i was going to damn well spoil myself instead.
from the cinnamon coffee and portugese natas i picked up at the record fair, to the strawberry lindt chocolate balls i ate while i burned my new london candle as i played my new records, i gave myself the perfect valentine's day date, and bragged about it all over instagram. and do you want to know something? i am grateful i got to do all by myself, because sometimes being selfish and making yourself a priority is way more important that waiting for someone else to read your mind, and be disappointed when they don't.
