ghosts of valentine's past.

Seriously. I should hate today.

I should hate Valentine’s Day.

So, why don’t I?

Well, for one, cards like this.

Is it because I’ve lived abroad for too long where Valentine’s Day cards are literal with roses and unironic declarations of love or have cards seriously stepped up their game?

Since George is my favorite character on Seinfeld that I sometimes joke I named our son after, it felt like a fitting card for my family.

But back to today.

Before I was married, my Valentine’s Days were always a little…well, weird. I’d try not to put too much importance on the day as a single girl, but somehow the day always managed to find me hiding under rock somewhere not wanting to get shot by its weirdo arrow.

So, let’s go back in time and visit my ghosts of Valentine’s past.

Picture it. The year 2000. Olympia, Washington.

It was a rainy night….

And my first year in college when I asked this girl I really liked out to the Valentine’s Day Vagina Monologues reading happening on campus.

Hold up.

Let’s back up a drop because….what?

I know.

I arrived at college having a long-distance boyfriend who went to Middlebury, so what was this all about? That’s exactly what I was asking myself at the time because I just didn’t get it. I was both confused and really happy with all the flutters you feel when you like someone. It’s something as a married woman now, I sometimes miss. Those shoots of stars in your stomach when you see—not even talk to but see—someone you really like. I felt that with this person, and I didn’t know what it meant. By today’s standards, it would be no big deal. There’d be a hashtag, an emoji and an online community waiting for me. But this was 2000 and I wasn’t exactly going to Ask Jeeves what it all meant.

Back then meaning was more important than representation even if I didn’t know exactly what I was representing. And as ultra-liberal as my college was, because I couldn’t define myself since I wasn’t ready for the bisexual label (because was I or was this a fluke?), I remember it was met with, dare I say, a drop of skepticism because what was the point I was trying to make here? (By the way, this is a huge theme in my next novel: bisexuality in the early aughts because it was overlooked, dismissed, and even made fun of as a hipster trend. A good example of this is the Sex and the City episode when Carrie dates a dude who’s bi.)

But it didn’t stop me from asking her out. And guess what? She said yes. On another college campus, this could have gone very differently, so I do thank my school for encouraging self-expression.

So, Valentine’s Day arrived and with my two good friends (one carrying a point-and-shoot camera to document it like it was prom) we went to her dorm where I picked her up for our date. I showed up in hunter green crushed velvet and she was wearing a gray suit that was too big on her. It was very exciting and so, so scary and my friend snapped a photo. To this day, I wonder where this photo is. When she developed the film a few weeks later, I didn’t want to see it because it reminded me of what happened after.

What happened was I didn’t talk. The entire time. That was how much I liked her. I felt like my infatuation consumed my breath and closing up my throat. When I tell my husband this story, he can’t picture it because I always have something to say. But that night I felt paralyzed in my own thoughts, thinking my point of view on everything was stupid even though I knew we had tons in common. Being from the East Coast! Phish! An appreciation for amber jewelry! The WTO protest (where I fell in like) in Seattle!

So, we went to the reading and a little reception in the library after where I continued to say very little. She may have tried to talk but I was too far in my own head to even notice. I just remember being weird with the calcium deposit stains I used to have on my front teeth.

I drank juice. I might have had a cookie. And I went back to my dorky Freshmen ‘A dorm’ and she went back to her cool “Alphabet Soup” Q dorm.

By the way, this story still makes me cringe which is why I’m writing about it for the first time (an exclusive!) as a sort of exorcism to my shame.

The following week, in the wake of this Valentine’s Day fiasco, she began dating and loudly hooking up with the worldly and exotic roommate of my good friend who took the picture that night.

I was mortified.

One, because her roommate would hear me pining over my crush with me obsessing over details.

A writer obsessing over details? Weird.

And two, I imagined the two of them laughing at me because I would’ve fucking laughed at me. You know…if I wasn’t me. It was all too much, and I drowned my embarrassment in Oregon Chai Lattes.

Now fast forward to 2004 to Los Angeles where it wasn’t raining, and my ex-boyfriend and I were trying to work things out. And by working things out, he somehow got me to sleep with him in his mom’s BMW (with vanity plates) outside the Greek Theatre.

Then 2008 happened with my neighbor in Brooklyn with the bed bugs who I thought was a good idea to date. He left me a creepy breakup Valentine poem on the Craigslist Missed Connection board (a board that’s supposed to, you know, connect people). How did I know it was me? Because it contained details that only I’d know. Also, he moved out before St. Patrick’s Day without telling me. So, I had to assume it was over.

There was the boyfriend in Paris who ended things a week before Valentine’s Day 2009 because I wasn’t intellectual enough and had fat thighs. This was the one who would place food next to my hips to show me “where it was going”. I’m Italian and Mexican, where the fuck else is the food supposed to go, asshole?

And then the ultimate, a week after Valentine’s Day 2011, getting dumped in Paris with the guy I was living with, leaving me on the streets (again in the rain) with the question on should I stay or should I leave Paris.

(I stayed.)

With that all said: I should hate Valentine’s Day. Like, really. I should. It’s only been humiliation and bad decisions, which in retrospect I see as no one’s fault but my own.

But I don’t hate today. I’d even go as far as to say I’m a nerd for it. Not only does it check off another winter milestone (like the Super Bowl) as we inch like slugs towards spring, but I don’t hate that the world is just a little pink for a few days.

I think it has to do with being raised by a single mom. From her, I learned that Valentine’s Day isn’t just for couples, which made perfect sense because after the post-holiday letdown of January, as I mentioned, the world suddenly goes pink and red and there are hearts everywhere.

SO. The point of all of this is a reminder to try not to hate too much on today. It’s one more day closer to spring. The days are getting a drop longer. And hey, it could be worse: you could have some dude putting food next to your thighs to show where it’s going to go next.

Happy Valentine’s Day, friends!

Eat chocolate, pet your animal, hug your kids and be merry.

LCM