I Can Buy Chocolate For Myself

But it sure would be nice if someone else thought to do so...

It's weird....I have been in tons of relationships and I've even been married once...but I have only had one Valentines Day when I wasn't single. And I happened to be pregnant on that one, so there was no candlelit dinner (KFC has some sort of code against open flames), no see-through nightie (I was seven months pregnant...my regular pajamas were perfectly obscene), no passionate love making (at that point, it was sea-turtle style humping), and no emotional professions of love (I...was...pregnant. Inflating to the size of a Winnebego and having swollen feet can just suck the romance right out of any relationship...). Oh, and it snowed that Valentines and the power went out and I got my socks wet.

So, I've never had a good Valentines. And it looks like this year will be another depressing rerun of all the years previous. My Valentines even sucked in elementary school. At a very young age, I had the acute understanding that the stack of cartoon character, baseball card sized Valentines on my desk had nothing to do with love (or tolerance, even)...they were all indicative of one thing: That everyone else had gotten the long list of classmates names, too, and that their mothers had nagged and guilted and forced them to check every single kid off the list (yes, even the one who smelled.) And, to make matters worse, while all the other distracted mothers bought boxes of cheesy premade cards and threw their kid a pink Sharpie, my mother whipped out the big tupperware box of lace and construction paper and glitter and proceeded to seal my fate as a weirdo by forcing me to make each...and...every...stinking...Valentine.

I haven't really mastered this art of being Single and Fierce and Valentines just draws more attention to my severe lack of romantic life and tragic abscence of confidence and coolness. I'd like to be able to say that I don't care...heck, I'd love to just be able to act like I don't care. But I do and it's painfully obvious. I snap my head up every time a delivery man comes, panting, eyes watering, hands shaking. I continue to esentially spazz out until the precious bouqet makes it's safe landing on someone elses desk, and then I go back to playing solataire until the next of the devils henchman come to torment me further. The flowers are never for me, but I never stop hyperventilating and hoping, even though I know that if there is a man out there paying to send me flowers, I've never met him and therefore he must be stark raving mad.

And then there are the looks of pity from all my friends and coworkers. They never come right out and say that they think I am pathetic, but facial expressions can be just as embarassing as words. And even worse than the looks are the consolation prizes--the gross, leftover chocolates from samplers, the wobby flower that was throwing off the other eleven in the vase. And sometimes, someone will feel so sorry for you, that instead of tossing you a few leftovers, they will actually go out and buy you a gift. That means that they were thinking of you and feeling sad for you at some point in time when you weren't even standing in front of them, which is absolutely mortifying.

So, I am twenty years old and sickeningly single on yet another Valentines Day. You'd think by now that I would really even notice, or that February 14th wouldn't even register as anything important, but the anticipation and that disappointment and the awkwardness never seem to fade. I am really not one of those women who is desperate for a man. I'm not even a big fan of lavish gifts or lots of attention. I don't submit to bikini waxes and you'll never catch me swooning. And I am the first person to protest the commercialized holiday. But secretly, I think Valentines Day is a really sweet occasion. And, secretly, I wish that someone would even just notice me enough to send me a little tiny vase of pink roses. I don't need diamonds and I'll pass on sex, but a "Hey you seem like a nice person and I think you're kind of cute" Valentine wouldn't be too bad.