Veto the Hallmark Holiday

Since Amandarin has already utilized my usual V-D graphic, I shall simply have to leave you with the message sprawled across my chest.

However you celebrate, whatever your plans, may your Tuesday not suck.

(HEY WAIT... this can also count as my self portrait for this week! Hooray!)

EDIT: Ok... after some thought, i figure i'd better put up a little more explanation behind the attitude.

People keep coming by and reading my shirt and asking me why I think “Valentine’s Day Stinks”

First of all, it is a fairly made up holiday, created to sell cards and candy.

Furthermore, it is a day that seems to belittle everyone it touches. If you are single, then you are deemed “unlucky” for the day. You are looked upon with sympathy, or worse, pity, and people chirp unrealistic, insincere quips such as “Maybe next year” and “You’ll find someone soon.”

If you are in a relationship, then there is pressure & comparisons that few can live up to. It becomes an endless stream of analysis: what did you get; what did you give; how does it compare (either to your last big gift, or to the Valentines gifts gotten by others in your acquaintance).

THEN, as if the analysis of this wasn’t demeaning enough, we must now look at “what does it mean for the future of your relationship.” One can’t go too big or too small, or the “love” is doomed. WHATEVER!!

Still.... despite the fact that I can sit here and logically look at all this, I found myself walking around the office, looking at the long stem roses on a co-worker’s desk (which I don’t even LIKE, by the way), and thinking “Oh that lucky girl…I wish I had someone who….”

"STOP… Stop right there," my brain thinks. I had someone who....

Once upon a time, I had the kind of man who would send flowers to the office. No... not even send. He hand delivered them, to let me know that he was waiting downstairs until I was off work, and then he whisked me away to a picnic.

You know what else he did?

He frequently grabbed me by the throat and cracked the back of my head up against a wall when he thought I wasn’t paying enough attention. He berated me for hours and hours for my “trust issues” (when I’d found the 8 page letter from his latest lover, specifically describing in language that Hustler wouldn’t print, the intimate details of their last encounter). He casually stuck his penis in any agreeable woman who would stand still long enough. He practiced his cruelties daily in one way or another.

Oh yes, I’ve had the “passionate and demonstrative man” and while I’m not saying that flowers on the desk indicate a philanderer or abuser, I’m saying that it is only one moment in time that does not tell a whole story. The behavior of any one day doesn’t tell the whole story! So why do so many make this one day life or death? The “be all/end all” statement of domestic bliss and heart contentment?

Give me a lover who after a year and half of waking up next to me, still smiles the moment he sees me. Give me someone who celebrates my individuality, instead of being embarrassed of the way I stick out in a crowd. Let me go home every night without the fear of finding evidence of another woman in my home and my bed. Let me express myself unedited and be loved and appreciated for the strength it takes to do so.

And if I can’t have that… then fuck it! I'm fine wearing my “Valentine’s Day Stinks” t-shirt with pride, going home and drinking a glass of wine with my cats. I’ll toast ME tonight, and every night. Sometimes I’ll laugh about it. Sometimes I’ll cry… but I’ll have a “whole story” that I can be proud of.