vday blues

 I've always really really loved valentines day. When I was little I would struggle to fall asleep the night before because I'd be thinking about the carefully labeled candies that I'd get to pass out in class the next day and become overwhelmed by the amount of premature enthusiasm that I'd feel. As time has gone by that enthusiasm hasn't waned. Many of my cherished memories have happened on this day: a meticulously planned middle school class party, a cafeteria fight my freshman year, the discovery of one of my favorite role models...The list goes on and on---it actually doesn't, I couldn't think of anymore great valentine's day based memories but I simply do not have the energy nor the interest to rewrite that section. This year is different, that sort of goes without saying at this point. We're in a pandemic, the sky is green, badabada bing. In my 16 year history of valentines day I've never felt bad about not actually having a valentine. My friends, my shows, and my pity flowers + chocolate from my dad have always felt like enough to satisfy my expectations for the day but this year they just don't. My love life is essentially nonexistent. I don't know why I wrote out the word essentially there. To use that word is to imply that there are other things to consider other than what's being highlighted---which there aren't. The proper world would've been literally. My love life is literally nonexistent. There's no nuance there, there are no exceptions. My love life does not exist and it never has. I usually keep myself from freaking out about that horrific fact by rolling out one of the three prerecorded excuses in my head: "The guys that go to your school are gross"..."You're an intimidating person. It isn't easy for people to approach you, let alone boys"..."You're too busy trying to be brilliant in all of the other areas of your life to deal with that stuff." Normally, one of those sayings console me and I roll over and go back to bed (yes, this is a nightly freak out) but nowadays they just aren't doing the trick. I think that the lack of stimulation from things that I used to do (read: enjoy myself) has lead me to have a lot of time to ruminate on some of the more troubling aspects of my life (read: the unnatural lack of male interactions that I have.) I know that I'm not the only person who's ever experienced this. I've seen the tiktoks, I've read the op-eds, and I have listened to the goddamn podcasts. But knowing that you're not the only person in a certain weirdo room doesn't make you look around at your contemporaries and think "yeah okay, I'll just stay here forever." No, It makes you look around and see the lifelong issues that staying in the weirdo room has stained your contemporaries with and think "oh my god I have to get out of here...like right now." I've got to get out of here. That obviously isn't the easiest feat right now witht he whole pandemic + me being a wimp thing, but I don't want to keep feeling like I'm missing out on a whole other universe of feelings. I don't really know if that made any sense, or if this has been written in a way that other people can read and not think "wow, not only is this chick a weird boyless 16 year old she also has some serious punctuation issues." Here's to another loveless day of love. Clink clink, cha cha, ta ta!