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Love the one you’re with

By Staff | Jan 30, 2020

Since the 14th Century lovebirds have been celebrating Valentine’s Day with traditional outings filled with intimate dinners, romantic movies, cards adorned with winged babies, and enough candy to kill a Keto-Resolution in its plus-sized tracks.

My attitude to this hellaholiday has always been one of a resounding “meh.” It just wasn’t in my cynical-yet-fun-Branchland-adjacent-raised-nature to indulge in something I knew that would, most likely, end with me disappointed and five pounds heavier after trying to find peace with my feelings in the bottom of a Whitman’s Sampler.

However, I do base this extreme apathy on two rather resounding instances in my life. The first occurred when my darling long-term-for-the-term second grade boyfriend, Nick, gave me a handmade card with “Happy Valentine’s Day” scrawled on it in Robin’s Egg Blue. He then presented my friend, Nicole, a bedazzled and bold Wonder Woman card emblazed with “I (heart) you” in pure, chunky iridescent glitter. I was, to borrow a word, shook.

And then, just last year, my husband downshifted through a mid-life crisis faster than Vin Diesel in Fast and the Furious #39 and left me with speed bumps across my back and furtively Googling “How to Be a Functioning Adult” the day after V-day solidly landed upon me.

Still not sure which betrayal hit me harder.

So as the hearts and cupids start popping up in all the store fronts and love is painted with pretty precision on the windows of Baskin Robbins, I, needless to say, start to get more than a little anxious. Although I will never be a girl who expects flowers and candies on the 14th of February, I am am still a romantic by nature. Especially when that romance is delivered by someone who truly understands the meaning of being in love.

But this year I have vowed to face Valentine’s Day head-on. I will wear the red dress for my chosen beau! I will don the heart-encrusted leggings! I will slather my lips in enough Kat Von D Everlasting Lipstick that the color will still be bold come mid-March! And I will try to embrace the love culture that engulfs the first half of February like a rhinovirus at the start of elementary.

Don’t have a Plus One? So what?! Be your own Great Love! This Valentine’s Day don’t wait for your “Nick” or “Vin” to clobber you with their love (or lack thereof). Buy yourself the flowers. Eat all the Aldi cheese. Find a vat of Hershey’s Kisses and don’t come up for air until you can smell colors. Love yourself and the skin you’re in! And yes, I just stole that from Olay. But, it totally works. Happy Valentine’s Day to all, and to all a goodnight. (Stole that, too! I have no shame- but you all already knew that).