Valentine’s Day, or, as my good friend and roommate not-so-affectionately terms it, “Guillotine Day,” is fast approaching, and I’m here to break down the sickly sweet, sugar-coated expectations of this day a little by saying: It’s okay if you hate this holiday. I do, too—at least, in the traditional, romantic sense.
Growing up, Valentine’s Day wasn’t about romance, though it was about love. In my house, we treated that day as a family holiday. We would all get candy for each other, make homemade cards, and gather in the living room to exchange gifts on Feb. 14.
I remember my sister and I begging our older brother to drive us to Walgreens with his newly-minted license one year so we could pick out Valentine’s gifts for the family. I recall many years of running through drugstore candy aisles, my little voice yelling to my siblings over the shelves, “Don’t come over here! Don’t look! I want it to be a surprise!”
I vividly remember getting my sister a heart-shaped box of chocolates with a monkey on it one year, and feeling like I’d utterly hit the jackpot in terms of Valentine’s-themed presents. I mean, a monkey? She loved monkeys, and picturing the joy on her face when I presented it to her on Valentine’s Day kept me giddy for days. I especially loved setting up makeshift partitions in the living room to make homemade cards next to my siblings and mom without any of us spoiling the surprise of what they looked like before the official gift exchange.
Despite how pure, sweet, and full of love these family Valentine’s Days were before romance was in the picture, I remember also hoping for the day I could celebrate Valentine’s Day the “real” way, with a sweetheart. I’d seen it so many times on TV, witnessed it through my brother’s teen relationships, and dreamt about it while staring at heart-shaped cakes in the grocery store bakery.
I was only 11 years old when that particular fantasy bubble popped for the first time.
I had had a dreadful, fully encompassing, as intense as an elementary school crush can be fixation on a blonde-haired little scarecrow boy from a play I was acting in. Through passed notes, and a particularly embarrassing poem from my end (rhymes and all), we confessed our crushes on one another just before the show ended. Soon I was convinced, in the way only precocious little brunette girls can be, that he must have been my soulmate.
The show ended in Dec., and I made a plan that I would send him a homemade Valentine—glitter, ruffles, and all—and call him on Valentine’s Day for a conversation full of romance and declarations of love. After all, that’s what 11-year-old soulmates are supposed to do, isn’t it?!
When Valentine’s Day rolled around several months later, after exactly five texts exchanged between the two of us, and one Valentine sent to him through the mail a week before that had received no response (I told myself it just got lost, or that he was likely just thinking up the perfect reply), I dialed his number, expecting a romantic, long-winded conversation that would surely be the start to a lifetime of “real,” romance-laden Valentine’s celebrations.
I think the call lasted about three minutes and contained an exchange of something in the neighborhood of 25 syllables total between the two of us. I really can’t blame him, looking back on it now–6th grade boy that he was, he desperately wanted to get back to playing ping-pong.
Thus concluded my first Epic Romance, and my first “real,” and first utterly crappy, Valentine’s Day.
The next “real,” (i.e., romantic) Valentine’s Day I experienced wasn’t until I was 16 years old. I had a sweetie at the time, who I had met at summer camp. He lived in another state, and I called him a “boyfriend” in the way you call someone you’ve met twice around school a “friend,” because “acquaintance” would require more explanation than anyone has the time or care for.
A few days before Valentine’s Day, he sent me a card, in which he’d written, “It’s totally okay if you’ve already agreed to be someone else’s Valentine, but if you haven’t, do you think you might want to be mine?”
He’d made homemade toffee and packed it in paper wrapped into a small drawstring bag. This sort of sappy, coupley, candy hearts behavior was what I had wanted for so many years. So, why did it feel more uncomfortable than it did lovely?
I ignored the odd feeling, texted him a resounding “yes” to the Valentine question, sent a Valentine of my own with haphazard glue dried around the edges, and ultimately blamed my stomach ache that year on the toffee.
We broke up (as much as two young teenagers who were barely dating in the first place can “break up”) a few weeks later, once I belatedly realized I liked the idea of having a boyfriend more than I actually liked the boyfriend himself.
When I was 17 years old, someone I thought I was in love with asked me to be in a relationship, and Valentine’s Day happened to be a few days later. I sent a very, very carefully curated package with cactus-shaped brownies and a card professing the deepest things someone that age can muster up in written form. The card came from my grandma’s apartment, and was probably older than me. It had two little cherubic angels embracing on the front, cheeks pink, and required a good amount of dust removal pre-mailing.
Their only response was, “thanks for the cake.”
The brownies had been a very specific inside joke of ours.
They broke up with me in a panic a few days later, with no explanation.
When I was 18 years old, I was thoroughly smitten with someone who was also smitten with me, and he had just moved states away. I sent him a tiny Valentine’s card, painted with yellow daisies, that said, among other very sappy, very silly things, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Happy Every Day.”
He didn’t send me anything, besides a simple thank you over text. We stopped talking a few months later.
A few years ago, someone who was planning to ask me to be their Valentine hit on my best friend in front of me a few weeks before that particular ill-fated Feb. 14, and I consequently ended things.
I’m sure you’re starting to see a trend here.
I know my experiences aren’t monolithic, and that plenty of people have lovely Valentine’s Day celebrations with romantic partners. But for me, despite my desperate longing as a kid for the kind of romance-centered Valentine’s celebrations I would see on TV, the Valentine’s Days before romance was in the picture remain my fondest Valentine’s memories by far.
So, if you’re feeling pressure to celebrate Valentine’s Day in a specific way, don’t! You aren’t beholden to enacting some sort of TV version of an ideal Feb. 14. However you want to celebrate (or not celebrate!), sharing love with the people in your life (or with yourself!) is perfectly okay.
Maybe I’ll have one of those picturesque, romantic Valentine’s celebrations some day. But you know what? I’m looking far more forward to the Valentine’s Days where my future family will gather in the living room and exchange those homemade cards and heart shaped boxes of chocolate with little monkeys on them.