I’ve never liked Valentine’s Day.
For some people, this may come as a total shock. I call myself a poet, and poets are usually known as the people who live for the one day that being emotional and lovey-dovey is acceptable. Love is generally synymous with Poetry.
Other people remember me as the kid who dressed in a mourner’s black on the 14th, bought a red rose from Wal-Mart…just to light that mother on fire. (It stunk up the dorm quite a bit, too.) I remember deciding that the day’s mission was to ****block all couples in my vicinity.
Don’t get me wrong. I think that Love itself is a beautiful thing. The reason we are saved and have a chance at eternal life is because of An Amazing Love. And why else do we love Luther, Barry, Donny, Marvin, Teddy, The Temptations, etc.?
I think I know where this hatred came from. Psychology would tell me that something horrendous happened in my youth that affected my view on this day. I believe this horrendous occasion is called: Middle School. And I may not be an official Psychologist or Therapist yet, but I figure the blame can be:
• Never getting a valentine in grade school
• Having all my crushes laugh at me in grade school
• Seeing all the jerks/douchebags/losers/weedheads/bums get the girls that they really didn’t deserve
• An amazingly staggering low self-esteem
• …Etc….
But. I’m 21 now. Grown man status. What’s done is done, and therefore water under the bridge.
But I’ve never liked Valentine’s Day.
I used to hate it, with the fury of a thousand hates. I even wrote a poem about it, aptly entitled “Love Sucks”. There was even a part two.
However, I cannot hate it anymore. My bitter/emo stage has passed, and I have experienced love, or understood more of it for real. Not even from a relationship standpoint. I have grown and learned and understood how universal the idea of love really is. With my parents, family and closest friends, I have experienced love.
The idea that February 14th is the official Love day is laughable to me. I see it as a result of commercialism. As a matter of fact, I fear that the same thing is/has been happening to Christmas…(but that’s for another post, another day…)
It would be, and has been wrong of me to hate the day. One of the main things that I’ve learned about love is that there is no such thing as too much love.
It sounds cheesy. It sounds hokey. It sounds corny. But its true.
I’ve never liked Valentine’s Day. I see no real die-hard purpose for it.
But there’s always a reason to love.
