February the Fourteenth

I hate Valentine's Day. It's worse than Christmas.

When I was 10 I got my first Valentine's card. I thought it might be from Robert Jones, whom I was mad about. I still have a bit of lead in my elbow from where he stabbed me with a pencil. I don't think he even did it on purpose, but it was the most attention he had ever paid me and there was no way anyone was taking that lead out.

Anyway, I was in transports of ecstasy until it transpired that the card was from my mother and sister, who had thought that thinking it was from Robert Jones might cheer me up. This was not an accurate assessment of the situation, as I was instead deeply humiliated and then inconsolable for days. I probably made them feel shit as well. I'm sorry. I should have refused to have anything to do with the whole thing from that moment on.

But I didn't, I persevered. Mistake.

There were a few blissful years when I first got together with my Significant Ex, where February 14th was a day full of magic and romance. Once I remember taking ecstasy and making snow angels together in the middle of the night in a perfect college garden setting. That kind of thing.

But the conversation that kick started the decline and eventual end of that relationship also took place on Valentine's Day. It was the only Friday night we had had on our own together for months, is why, it was more of a coincidence than anything else, but it was pretty fucking awful. We had separated by the time it came round the next year, and that year I went back to see my mum. She didn't try and give me any cards that time, but she did take a photo of me on the beach at Lytham, which is a little bit too studied in its misery, but mostly does the job.

It got even more complicated once Miles and I got together, and for a few years I made a point of spending the day on my own, drinking red wine, being reflective and then just being pissed. That didn't work last year, as we were in Guatemala together, and I felt I should perhaps show a bit of grace and maturity and get over stuff. He bought me a necklace with a little jade axe on it, which was Dead Symbolic as for a while I used a real axe to chop wood representing him (and other people, I was fairly generous in my fury) into little pieces. And we moved on.

Or that was the plan, because the whole hearts and flowers thing still makes me want to hurl something out the window. LIFE ISN'T LIKE THAT OKAY?

Glad I've got that off my chest.

joella