Originally posted 2/15/09 - Valentine, Shmalentine

As a woman in her early 30s who's been single for a very long time, I can usually take Valentine's Day in stride and with lots of silly humor. My friend Debbie and I, back when we shared a blog, enjoyed the days leading up to Valentine's Day 2005 with several posts leading up to Black Monday (i.e., don't punch out deliveryguys who bring flowers to your coworkers). I learned that another name for V-Day was SAD = Single Awareness Day. Those were the days. :)

However, this Valentine's Day 2009 has been extra hard on me for some reason. I decided to call it UPAD = Unsolicited Pity Awareness Day, and I've been trying not to be in a funk all month. I'm not sure if it's because my biological clock has mercilessly kicked it up a notch or because I'm in the final stages (hopefully) of getting over a guy that I've had ridiculously intense feelings for -- whatever reason, V-Day 2009 has been excruciating. I think the fact that it's fallen on a Saturday this year (Black Saturday) has made it worse -- your whole week builds up to it, and you even spend Sunday reminiscing about it or recuperating from it.

I think I heard somewhere that St. Valentine's Day was originally intended to celebrate love in general -- i.e., God's love, brotherly love, family love, etc. -- rather than romantic/erotic love. And maybe over the years, society or the flower and candy companies turned it into a one-day celebration of couples' romance. I'm sorry, but that's an awful idea. When you're romantically involved with someone, you should celebrate them all the time, not just save it for February 14th. And those of us who don't have a significant other to share the day with end up feeling left out, unnecessarily pitied, and left to decay in the reject pile of humankind. And we women try not to spend the entire day hating every man who we've liked but hasn't returned our feelings. (Unrequited love absolutely stinks, by the way, but that is another discussion altogether.)

I can't speak for the guys, but I think any woman who's close to my age and has been dateless for about as long as I have can identify with how I feel. It's a pain that is difficult to comfort. I can pour my heart out to God, and He is always faithful to comfort me and make sure I have everything I need, but the unrequited-guy part of the equation I think is what makes it so hard. Anti-Valentine humor often hits the spot. Changing the subject altogether can feel even better.

So, if you've felt as crappily as I have this month, I think it's best to just go to Jesus and maybe have a good cry with Him, enjoy some UPAD jokes, and just wait for this awful holiday to pass.

I hesitate to blog about my lovelife (or lack thereof!), especially on MySpace, because doing so tends to attract unsolicited flirtatious messages and friend requests from men who I absolutely wouldn't be interested in. Sorry, but I'm just being honest, :) and if you look on my profile, you'll see that I'm not on MySpace for dating purposes, anyway. And that's why I've sat down to write about this in the first place -- brutal honesty. I know that someday God will bring me a man, but while I'm waiting, it can really hurt. I'm learning that it's OK to hurt sometimes. (As long as we take our pain to the right Person.)

In the meantime, I'll try not to spread the pain around by punching any deliveryguys in the nose. And UPAD weekend will be over tomorrow. :) Oh, happy day!