I wouldn't call it irony. The holiday has been overused this way, and I'm not about to give the candy companies satisfaction by buying up their heartshaped boxes and shoving chocolate into my face so as to forget the fact that I lost my Valentine about a week before their designated love fest. Okay, so I am doing this. I have been eating three Fanny May Trinidads a day, and re-reading the traditional Valentine's Day Cards I've received from my Grandma Joyce and my mom and dad with the most poisonous, solid mass of pain in my chest and an acute desire to stgeal a bottle of champagne from the Campus Town liquor store. But I can't go to Campus Town. Because we were there together. And I've already tried to go to the record store with Dave, but there's this deep suspicion that the manager, Jay, remembers that I was there with this very tall, very self-serious boy with the most beautiful mouth. And if Jay remembers, and even looks at me once as if he wonders what happened to that boy, who was the lsat person I visited the record store with, then I will have to buy another copy of Little Earthquakes from the sales rack and use it to torture myself at home. But I will smile as I purchase it, this shit smile that says, 'I'm a fool. I know.' And there will be a few tears behind my eyes because I absent mindedly picked up the David Bazan album and thought, "File under Pedro the Lion." And no one gets that joke except him.
But look at me! Look at me giving all this to the ancient cliche, the heart broken just before Valentine's Day. If I cared about things like Valentine's Day, having a Valentine or receiving gifts, then none of you would be reading this shit, because I would be an entirely different person. You all know I'm spiteful about holidays in general. I couldn't wait to get Christmas over with. But back then, I had a partner in cynicism. Left to my own growls and mumbles and ass twitches, it's not nearly as fun. I miss him so much. Not because it's Valentine's Day, but because I miss him. I don't care what day it is. Not at all. I don't even KNOW what day it is, really.
There is a lot of love in my life, though. Something I think he found quaint, maybe cute, but not satisfying enough. I am one of those people that can sicken the cool and solemn sometimes. If I'm not darkly into death and existential questions, then I am a little bunny jumping around giving hugs. And I thought he was a polar bear. A sweet, soft, big lug with a tender little heart and a nuzzling nose. A nose I loved to nuzzle. But it turns out, I had to be someone else. I had to be cool. I had to be perfect. I had to be an intellectual or a cynic or an art school confidential, or a goddess at all times or no go. No go. He left quickly, in the night. No, I didn't see it coming, so fuck you, I'm a fool, okay? But I wanted something real, where I could be real and maybe he could see that I could be both. But he didn't see that. And now I'm left wondering what the fuck is wrong with me. Why don't I get to stay cool like he does?
But I have secrets. This I will always own. Lots of secrets, and things only certain people can see in my eyes. This is what makes me a bloody valentine, a funny valentine, a lethal valentine, the sweetest valentine to ever know too much about souls.
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