Diatribe

It completely hit me by surprise.

You see, I haven't made it to an actual store in quite a while. I did some uber-shopping about two weeks ago, such that I'm still going strong in the kitchen, well past the time I finished off the milk. And I hadn't been to a non-grocery store in...well I can't remember the last time, so it was a while.

But I needed both cotton swabs and scented body wash (I don't go in for that wimpy 'soap' stuff anymore; we are high class all the way) as the bathroom area of my house was suddenly sorely lacking. So I wander into Target and it's like a blitz on the senses.

Valentine's Day. Everywhere.

People who have not met me do not understand the depths to which I hate this holiday. It's hard to describe with mere words. I really need to be able to use my voice, hands, gestures, some crayons, markers, posterboard,and a really good multimedia software package to properly convey the level of my loathing. But we'll just shoot from the hip and hope for the best.

Ugh. HATE.

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Hmm? I guess that really wasn't very descriptive. Let's try again.

I just can't stand any of it. I hated it when I was dating someone, I hate the weird expectation, the fakeness of it all. It's just so contrived. Like, not only has it been decreed on which day this little declaration of true emotion and your feelings through the end of time (or until graduation, whatever) will have to be going down, there is a very specific manner in which you have to do it.

Just....no. I mean, I am overstating. You can make it your own thing, but it's a level of inherent commercialism that dwarfs even Christmas, to me at least, by the artificial nature of it all. And there totally aren't cool presents and big family dinners in the middle of February. It's all bad chocolate, wilted flowers, cheesy prepackaged sentiments in card form, and dinner at a nice chain restaurant.

AND

Then when you aren't dating someone, it's totally worse. Because then, not only do you resent everything about the holiday (see the two paragraphs above) and would wail and gnash your teeth about the whole thing, but you don't even get to participate. Even though you know that you think it's stupid and totally would hate it, it doesn't even matter because you don't have anyone to celebrate it. There is a two person minimum to this holiday.

"You don't get a vote," says Valentine's Day (who, in my mind for unknown reasons, sounds exactly like Quentin Tarrantino) "because you are alone. The holiday doesn't apply to you. Why don't you go play some more video games, buddy?"

It's sort of like hating the popular kids in school, because they act, like, soooo stupid and, like, you can't believe that all they do is, like, get drunk and stuff and that is soooo lame. But in reality, it doesn't matter because you're secretly totally jealous of the popular kids and would join them in a second if you could.

!!--!! Do you see what this holiday has done to me? I'm directly mocking myself in the exact same entry that I started in. It's this holiday. It's insidious, with its destructive powers. With all its stupid hearts and arrows and flowers and stupid naked angles flying around and all the love and togetherness.

Makes me want to vomit.

And we still have 12 more days to go.