Now I can sit through as many soppy status updates and Instagram photos of flowers and chocolates as the next person, fan of Valentine’s day or not.
Is this really necessary?
I just feel if we really must have a day celebrating how fantastic relationships are, why don’t we have a day highlighting the darker side of all things couple-y? All the saccharine wonder of the 14th is unbearable if it’s just another day.
I’ve not seen any photos today captioned “another £75 bouquet of roses, standard day in our amazing relationship”. If Valentine’s gives couples an excuse to concentrate on the good, then I’m all for it.
But I propose we have a day, let’s say November 25th (cause it’ll be sufficiently dark and cold by then), where we focus on all the shit bits. They exist!
Every November 25th we’ll all sit around and lament our free time (best celebrated in groups of people you don’t like). We’ll reflect on all the post-break-up awkwardness and point-scoring that can only be prevented by marriage.
We’ll remember all those parties we couldn’t go to because they’d be there. We’ll read all our blog entries from years ago when we were vulnerable and online.
We’ll revisit all the probably-perfect-decent people who’ve we’ve pathetically irrationally hated because they liked one of our ex’s statuses about a cool band (that might just be me though).
Any why do we do all these things? To remind ourselves that they’re all pretty much inevitable if we balk at the m word.
My point is, it isn’t all sweetness and light, and Valentine’s Day makes me feel like everyone’s pretending that it is. Which is fine in itself, but why can’t we temper it? We can call it ‘Evening-Out Day’ or ‘Truth Day’.
It would just make all this over-romanticised sickly bullshit easier to swallow.
Armchair Musician 