Love loves to love love

The emotionally distant, the too-cool-for-cuteness, we can’t always be sweet. We don’t always know how. But that doesn’t mean we’re incapable of wanting it. That’s what today is for.

Chalk it up to self-indulgent over-listening to really depressing music on the long drives to and from Baguio over the holidays, but one of my most pervasive realizations towards the end of last year was that 2014 would be my first year of V-Day singlehood in almost a decade. “Oh my God,” I told my friends over Line, tacking on a whole pile of obnoxious crying stickers, “I haven’t been single on Valentine’s Day since I was 17!” (Cue eye-rolling from my single-since-birth girlfriends.)

Singlehood only seems to matter on this day of the year. I mean, I’m sure that for some, ongoing singlehood is a grating annoyance. But for those of us who are mostly satisfactorily (if not happily) unattached, Valentine’s Day is the one day of the year that we’re forced to bear witness to sappiness, public displays of affection, and bundles of obscenely overpriced blooms passing from a pair of hands into another, then made to question ourselves. “Girl, look at your life, look at your choices,” we might think, as we gaze upon the happily loved up. “Why don’t I have that right now?” On any other day we’d shrug it off, but Feb. 14 really lives up to the Single Awareness Day moniker. We are made well aware of precisely how alone we are. Thanks, couples. Thanks a lot.

The attached (apart from the ones who grew up thinking rom-coms were accurate representations of real life and thus have expectations; if you’re with one of those, good luck getting that flash mob together!) don’t seem to care much for this so-called holiday otherwise. It’s just another day in the year (with exponentially worse traffic this 2014 because it’s Friday and a payday to boot) that may or may not be spent with the person you’re ideally going to be with for the other 364. No big.

Let me confess to you now as I listen alternately to The National and to Taylor Swift on an endless, heart-slaying loop: For a decade, I acted like it was a total waste of time, but in truth, this non-holiday always meant a little more to me than I ever let on. It’s because I’m a teenage girl. (When asked to name my favorite Taylor Swift song, I answered Enchanted. “You’re such a teenage girl!” said Young Star editor Raymond Ang. So, yes. Teenage girl.) Gross, right?

I never actively celebrated Valentine’s Day with a significant other, though. Sure, we would go out to dinner, but it was just dinner, not a V-Day date, or at least that’s what we used to tell ourselves. I’d receive gifts (never flowers), but for fabricated reasons completely unrelated to V-Day. (One time, the excuse was Chinese New Year.) I just didn’t think it was cool to be a romantic. It feels like nobody does. It didn’t seem fashionable to be excited about it; I was too “smart” to buy into that Hallmark hype. I was the kind of girl who listened to Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” over and over at the tender age of eight, soaking up the angst long before I even had anything to be well and truly angry about, then I only got worse as the years progressed. I could never shake off that coat of cynicism and allow myself to admit that I actually wanted the flowers and the chocolate and the whole sentimental shebang, however basic it might be. But I did. Damn you, Disney, you did your work well.

Yeah, it’s commercialized as hell. Yeah, it can be a huge hassle, because with great expectations sometimes come great disappointments and even greater arguments. (I remember a friend being absolutely livid when her then boyfriend bought her another variety of flower in lieu of traditional red roses.) I do feel very, very sorry for guys who are pressured to make the day super-special for their unreasonably demanding girlfriends. (Ladies, you gotta learn to manage your expectations!) Yeah, the celebration of love and romance shouldn’t be limited to just one day of the year — it really shouldn’t. You should celebrate that all year round if you’re fortunate enough to have it. But here’s the thing: Not all of us can. The emotionally distant, the too-cool-for-cuteness, we can’t always be sweet. We just don’t have it in us. But that doesn’t mean we’re incapable of wanting it. That’s what today is for. I like the idea of having an excuse to finally make a move, whatever that move may be. On just this one day.

You have a free pass to be cheesy. Do something that sounds stupid on paper but makes you a little happier inside. Wear a shade of Lancôme’s Rouge in Love lipstick, just because it’s called Rouge in Love, just because you want to. (I always do.) Give people flowers. Whatever. Be pretentious for the remaining 320 days of 2014, single or otherwise. Be too cool for love tomorrow. Not today.