A Day to Love

I know people have heard me say this before, but my freshman year in college I came up with the phrase "It's not SAD (Single Awareness Day), be GLAD (Grateful Losers Aren't Datingyou)!" We had a big party that you weren't allowed to come to if you had a boyfriend or girlfriend, and we served heart-shaped pizza and played Taboo. It was great.

So, I've been thinking about Valentine's Day. I know some people get excited about it, and some people get grumpy, and then there's all the dislike of the commercialism inherent in the holiday. It's funny, I've always disliked commercialism (specifically commercialism that replaces/clouds the meaning behind the day), but I enjoyed Valentine's Day itself. Candy and all those little Nickelodeon themed cards, amirite?

Well okay, more than candy, haha. Even if V-day WAS brought about for commercial reasons, it's still kind of awesome to have a day set aside for celebrating this thing called love. A break from the routine to let your loved ones know what they mean to you and all.

Usually Valentine's Day does two things for me: leaves me feeling sentimental and sweet, and also makes more poignant the pain of lacking a "special someone" to share it with. Which I think everyone's at least experienced once.

But this year, it was TOTALLY different for me.

All day, I felt this sort of brightness, just within myself. No crushes to stress out about, no boyfriend or anything, and for some reason that felt good. It was wonderful to look back on a few months ago, especially, and realize the progress I have made in loving myself, which is a challenge for me. It was just...good! A lovely, full feeling of appreciation and positivity that didn't depend on anyone else. Other than having to go to municipal court for a traffic ticket, I had no reason to cry ;)

I think that, more than anything else, what lent my day such a sweet tone was that I just had this kind of awareness of the love in the world. Knowing that each member of my family (except Lindsay and me) has their special someone, and that on that day, they were dedicating special care and attention and love and appreciation to one another. It's like love is this beautiful aurora borealis that's wrapping around the earth, which I'm not a part of, but I feel a part of anyway. Seeing and knowing it's there is still beautiful in and of itself. And it doesn't make a difference that right now I'm not experiencing the romantic kind of eternal love, because I know I will, and for some reason, on that day that surety didn't give me a sense of longing so much as a sense of security and completion. Things will be the way they're supposed to be, and that's just a beautiful thing, isn't it?

Hoping you all experience love in some way today,
Lauren