Grrrr! Valentines Day!

Any other singles here a bit tired of having Valentines Day thrust elbow-deep down our throats at this time of year?

I’m single by choice – after 2 disastrous marriages, there’s no way I’m going to subject myself to that again. People say, “but they’re not all like that, there are good blokes out there”, and I’m sure there are. But apparently I’m a really bad judge of character, so it’s much simpler to just be with myself. Which is lucky for me, because since I’ve had 16 skin cancers hacked off my face and look like Herman Munster after a heavy weekend on the sauce, the only second glances I get from blokes these days are ones where I can SEE them thinking “holy crap, what happened to you!!?”

However, the ambivalence of the situation is that, even though I choose to be alone, it still wrecks me that I AM alone. Both those marriages were to men I loved with all my heart, and it SHOULD have worked out. I should have had a happy “normal” life with one or the other of them. I should have been able to trust them when they said “I love you” and “I do”. I should have been able to rely on their promises of loving me forever instead of having “yeah, I meant it a couple of years ago, but you’re such a pain in the a$$ now”. I worked hard to be a good wife to both of them, and it seems really unfair to me that because one of them decided that drugs (and my cousin) were much more exciting than me, and the other decided that “wife” was synonymous with “obedient slave or subject to violence”, I have to spend each February seeing “hahaha, you’re not one of those who have somebody to validate your existence by wishing to spend time with you” plastered all over the shops in hearts and flowers.

For me it’s not Valentines Day, it’s “Here are some chocolates which nobody is going to give you because you’re not important to anybody” Day. It’s “Yeah, you go to the shops and see some woman yelling at her man, belittling him in public, but even she is more worthy of love than you” Day. It’s “you can go to the RSL for lunch and see ladies putting their men’s weekly wages into the pokies, but they’re going to have somebody who loves them come home to them tonight” Day. It’s “You KNOW she’s cheating on him, but he still loves her, so what the hell is so wrong with YOU?” Day.

For me, Valentines Day is a yearly reminder that, however hard I tried, I was found unworthy of love. It’s a reminder that there are millions and millions of people out there who all have faults and flaws, just like me, but somebody still wants them in their life. Other people get to be loved unconditionally, other people are accepted for who they are, other people are found to have some redeeming factor or other which makes their loved ones love them back. And all I have is the memory of men I loved saying things like “you always nag me”, “you’ve got a fat a$$”, “yeah, so you had a Caesar, it’s been a week now, you should be back to cooking my dinner like a wife’s supposed to do”, and the classic (which, if I’m in the right mood, actually makes me laugh now), “why do you have to READ?” (yeah, his biggest complaint about me was that I like to read!)

Anyway, I hope that those of you who are loved receive the full measure of the love you deserve this Valentines. And for those of you who are single, I wish you the ability to remember that even though there may not be somebody to kiss you and give you flowers, you are WORTHY of love in full measure. And I’ll try to convince myself of that on Tuesday, too.