Valentine’s Day. V-Day, Galentine’s Day, Single Awareness Day – whatever you call it, it’s looming around the corner. To those of you who have a significant other to celebrate with, congratulations. I hope your day is magical and filled with love and sunshine and lots of great sex. (Ladies, if it’s not – call me.) However, this blog is not for you twitter-pated fools. This blog is for my fellow single ladies.
Now, ladies. I understand that this impending holiday might possibly be the worst of the year for some of you. I know this year, it’s going to be particularly rough for me. I’m a sucker for romance, and I whip out my A-game on Valentine’s Day. Flowers, cute handmade gifts, love letters, and sex for hours. I would’ve loved for nothing more than to have been curled up with a special someone, watching Moulin Rouge and singing along and acting like a dopey lovestruck child. I will not be doing this. Instead, I’ll be out, gettin’ my drank on and hoping that some beautiful woman will take pity on me and distract me with kisses. (Realistically, my chances of that happening are quite slim.)
However, for those of us who are dreading how single we’ll be this coming V-Day, there is still hope. First and foremost, we have each other. If you’ve got a group of friends who also happen to be single ladies (or single fellas, whichever works for you), gather them together and plan on spending the evening with each other. Whether that’s going out to the bars, staying in and eating chocolate mug cake, or going to your college’s production of The Vagina Monologues – which, by the way, is at Bowker Auditorium at UMass at 7pm this Friday and Saturday, and 3pm on Sunday – you need to make your own fun. Yes, the sight of happy couples may be revolting. But you also need to realize that your singleness, in no way, impacts the couples around you.
If you’re a lone single lady in a herd of couples, this advice may be screaming in your face. You may be entirely aware of how difficult it is to stay happy, when you’re surrounded by love and you feel as though you’re getting none. On this Valentine’s Day, I charge you with the task of being your own girlfriend. You’ve always wanted to go to that cute little pasta place downtown? See if they’ve got a table for one available. You wanna take a nice bubble bath, with candles, and soothing music? Break out the bath bomb, and get all splish-splashy. Feeling in the mood to be seduced? You’ve got a couple options for this, my darling, and I highly recommend looking into each and every one of them. Take control of your Valentine’s Day, and make it the best possible night for you. And if one of your couple-friends asks you to play chauffeur to them all night, you should prooobably tell them you have a date. Don’t tell them who with – just don’t put yourself in a place where you’ll be hating your life all night.
For those of us fresh out of relationships, this holiday might sting a little more than usual. There may be a little more wine involved, and if left unchecked, that wine might lead to a heavy amount of regret in the morning. My advice to you, dear ladies, is simply this – do NOT talk to your ex on Valentine’s Day. That might be the most stupid thing you could do. It doesn’t matter why you were broken up with, or if you were the one who did the breaking up. It does not matter if they miss you, or if they really regret how things ended, or if they just want to tell you they love you one more time. If you still have feelings for your ex, it’s going to be damn hard not to talk to them. But you need to remember that they’re an ex for a reason. Things ended, and you can’t take that back. There could be a small chance that your ex is honest in their intentions, and does want to make things right by you. Valentine’s Day is NOT the day to do it. If that’s what they really want, they can wait until later.
If, for any reason, you find yourself feeling low on this coming Valentine’s Day, recognize the positives in the situation. Firstly, it’s only one day of the year. Yes, they’ve been building up to it since New Year’s Day, and I’ve personally seen enough Valentine’s Cards to never want to see another again, but once February 15th hits, it’s all over. The next silver lining is that you can go to whatever store you want and get all that love-themed candy for up to 75% off on the 15th. That allows you to get three times the chocolate for the same price, and I don’t know about you, but that’s an offer that I probably won’t be refusing. A third thing to look forward to is that while you may be single this year on Valentine’s Day, this won’t be the case forever. There will be someone who wants to spend every Valentine’s Day with you, but they just haven’t figured it out yet. Give ‘em a year to catch up, and who knows, maybe next year YOU’LL be getting the beautiful bouquet of roses instead of giving them. Chins up, ladies, and remember – you are composed of the same elements that diamonds and stars are made of. You deserve someone who’ll shower you in the former, and praise you as though you’re the latter. Refuse to settle for anything less.
The Lesbian Perspective 