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Lovin' It |
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Lovin' It
This time of year sucks. It’s cold. Everyone looks pale and sickly. Relationships are touchy and strained from too much time indoors. People are grumpy. It’s flu season and tax season coming right on the heels of the most alienating holiday ever--Stupid Valentine’s Day.
It’s not that I hate Valentine’s Day. How can I hate a day devoted to love? Ok, well, I do actually hate V-Day, but it’s because it isn’t actually a holiday (no official day off) and it isn’t actually a day devoted to love. It is a commercialized, ridiculous holiday that preys on your strongest emotions, and then literally and figuratively proceeds to sell you ideas of what love is supposed to look like. And we all buy it hook, line and sinker.
Valentine’s Day is all about the dream, the fairy-tale, standing in the rain, holding a boom box, weeping, end-scene, cut, that’s-a-wrap, kind of love. I’ll tell you what it’s not about though; it’s not about the drunken, teary-eyed confessions, why-don’t-you love me? kind of love. It’s also not about broken promises, broken engagements, broken hearts and broken dreams. For many people, Valentine’s Day is just another painful reminder that someone they love is not waiting at their doorstep, not turning around at the airport, not building their dream house or not grabbing them and telling them they can’t live without them.
And even if you are with someone, Valentine’s Day doesn’t usually end like the sappy greeting card commercials or even sappier romantic comedies. They usually end with a fight, due to a disappointment, because an expectation of what the day was supposed to be like was not met; an expectation created by the repetition of the unrealistic ideas of romance over and over and over again. We are so desensitized to the conditioned expectations and fairy tales that have been subliminally burned into our brains for years, we don’t even notice they are there--let alone question where the emptiness comes from or the vague feeling that we aren’t getting something we want.
In other words, the road to hell is not paved with good intentions. It’s paved with expectations.
Anyway, I thought I had finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel of winter. The light was the first stirrings of Spring Fever that came four days ago when it was 60 degrees. 60 degrees!!! In the middle of February! I was driving with the windows down, blasting some Beck, exalting in the fact that my winter misery would soon come to an end.
Fat chance. Now it’s about 13 degrees with a wind chill that can’t be more than zero. I cannot escape an overwhelming and unbearable feeling of restlessness, pastiness and unattractiveness. I am so restless I want to crawl out of my skin. Now I know how a seed feels. And I have come to one conclusion—that South is the way to go. The birds have got it right. So…with my heavy, winter, Valentine’s Day heart still in tact, I might just have to follow their example and fly away. Or drive. Ya never know.
Article Series
This article is part 2 of a 5 part series. Other articles in this series are shown below:
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My Candy
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Lovin' It
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PHETASY TOUR 2006 KICKS OFF!!!
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The Power of Will
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Random Road Thoughts
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