Valentine’s Day is not as horrible as people make it out to be. By far, it is one of my favorite holidays. Not because I actually celebrate it or anything, but because the ability to observe others is amplified. It’s a holiday composed of both chaos and silence. Due to the fact that the holiday pulls at the varying definitions of what love can be, creating confusion on if the day is just for romantic love. I love the ability to watch love unfold and see people cluelessly walk past it.
It’s a holiday where you see two close friends linger in each other’s presence a little longer than the average day. These special 24 hours highlight the brush strokes of age dissipating on a grown woman’s face, making her glow like a child when she sees a simple gesture of love. It’s the type of day where you see pupils dilating, lovers quarreling affectionately, and friends uniting to share singleness and laugh it away. It’s a day where love is fluid in everyday movements, electrically charging the air with how prominent it is.
It’s a holiday where you see an older couple dancing slowly together, engulfed in each other’s laughter, their ears eagerly consuming the sounds that they’ve heard a thousand times over. It’s a countdown of people putting themselves out there, talking to new people, and sharing the anxiety of wanting it to go right. The day marks a group of women meeting to watch. unrealistic portrayals of love dancing across their screens and laughing at the theatrics of it all.
It’s a day so widely hated, yet I find it to be endearing, with the large heart-shaped boxes of chocolate, cheap, ratty teddy bears, and the silly little Valentines meant for a kids’ holiday party. In a way, it’s consumeristic, a new push to spend your money. I can understand the hatred towards that. But it’s the little acts, the excitement over those stupid teddy bears and chemically altered chocolates, that can’t wipe the smile from my face. It’s not about the money or even a grand gesture. The vivid emotions so openly expressed over things that are so childish in hindsight make me love love.
And it’s not just the romantic type of love that I enjoy either; it’s all of it. It was a day originally marked for romantic partners, and still is, but it’s the effort everyone makes to feel and express love that makes the day so much more meaningful. For something people seem to find so scarce 364 days of the year, it burns so brightly on this specific day. It makes me happy and hopeful that it’s still there like an old friend that never left.
I used to disregard the day in melancholic envy. Jealousy was grasping at my every thought for something that I didn’t have. But I’m too tired to be weighed down by hatred of wanting something that I now realize I already have. It’s not a holiday worth vilifying when it expresses something so beautiful
