Valentine’s Lament

This year, as is the case every year, there shall be a 14th of February. There is absolutely nothing anyone can do about this, and similarly there is almost nothing anyone can do about the fact this also happens to be Valentine’s day. Frankly, I abhor Valentine’s day, and shan’t make any bones about it. What it essentially is, is an opportunity for smug couples to rub in everyone’s faces how bloody happy they are, and how they’ve finally found ‘the one’.

The concept of Valentine’s day alone is a total monstrosity; a poor and thinly veiled excuse for card and gift companies to swindle more of working people’s hard-earned money out of them. Most of us are even aware of the fact, and shell out anyway for fear of being left out, and to conform to what’s expected of us, all while whoever is in charge of greetings card shops cackle to themselves about how the gormless masses continue to cough up. Those of us don’t participate (whether as part of a conscious decision or simply through being single) are made to swallow our fate as sad losers, and have all the Valentine’s rubbish crammed down our throats, as we choke and splutter and eat discounted chocolate, wondering all the while why even our mum didn’t bother to get us a card.

No doubt a hint of bitterness can be detected, and that’s because I’m bitter. I understand, in my mind, that being single isn’t all that terrible a thing. I don’t walk around in a Bridget Jones-esque fashion looking for a man, and 364 days a year I spend very little time contemplating my life as a spinster. But another part of me – the weak, feeble part of myself which I detest and keep confined to the shadows – will not accept that it’s simply a marketing scam, and for a whole day I am filled with hate for romance and for couples, and I hate myself for hating it so much. I once actually, by some miracle, received a Valentine’s gift from someone other than my mother, and the sting was successfully taken out of the day for the duration of that particular Valentine’s. But that very fact made me realise what a terrible hypocrite I am and stained my outlook of myself and my own loneliness reflexes forever. Regardless, I will spend next Tuesday listening to The Smiths whilst crying dramatically, cursing love and lovers and my own dark, desolate soul.