Everyone Says I Love You

(Watch this movie!)

Desperately... trying... to... post, but I keep getting distracted by... um... work? No, that's not convincing. Killer robots? Annie's sense of humor? Nah, just day-dreaming about my non-Valentine's Day plans that have nothing whatsoever to do with Valentine's Day not even a little bit not at all so don't suggest it because they are totally unrelated even if they do involve what may be perceived as a romantic Italian dinner with an astoundingly good-looking man. Alright, I just made myself throw up a little bit in my mouth.



Before I link to interesting articles and deconstruct the sociological implications of Christianized pagan holidays and how they're molded by our consumerist ethos, I want it on the record that the unfortunate acronym "VD" should be expunged from use. It's one thing to think of Victory or WWII on V-Day, it's another thing entirely to think of sexually transmitted infections. Really? Let's tone it down a notch.



We've all been hurt by love, all loved and lost, all been spurned; it's the inevitability of making yourself vulnerable to another person. To write some concise reflection on love, a blog-worthy soliloquy, is impossible, like trying to capture the intricacies of a painting in a paragraph (or avoiding cliches in a post on love). In researching this post (I am such a nerd-- who else researches a post on love?), I read endless perspectives on love or lack thereof, sex and lack of it, Valentine's Day or not. You all know that, while I don't choose V-Day, I do choose love. In my Odyssey post, I talked about loving the Queen of the World and how, painful as it was, the loss was worth it. I felt the same way when I ended a very long relationship last fall. To borrow a line from one of my favorite movies , "The juice was worth the squeeze." Even if it is all in my head, the cost of avoiding pain is too big a price to pay and the benefit of opening myself to love is too great to deny. Sappy? Maybe. True? Unquestionably, for me at least. Yes, I'm a mushball. Okay? You happy now? I am a big, sticky ball of cliche-ridden mush and I'm proud of it!

So where does that leave me? Tonight, I'm going to go have a non-V-Day dinner with someone who makes me happy, encourages me to appreciate the details, and helps me forget that loss is inevitable. I wish the same for each and every one of you, for every night.