February 15th: Despair Day

This Valentine’s Day, in the Year of our Lord 2016, during which I spend my thirty-sixth consecutive Valentine’s Day single, it occurs to me we single people are really, really selfish on Valentine’s Day.

Why? Why do we do it? Why do we post snarky, pernicious little comments about being single on Valentine’s Day and how much it sucks? The world gets it. Being alone sucks. We have three hundred and sixty-four days every single year to find a date. Some years, we even get an extra day. Is that not enough for us? One day a year we set aside for people in love, one day for them to forget about their troubles and just be in love. Why begrudge lovers their day?

I bring this up not just to defend Valentine’s Day as being a day for couples and not us, but also to remind us something we tend to forget: no one ever complained themselves into a relationship. We’re not doing any favors by griping; just wallowing in the shared misery of being alone in very, very good company, a strange circumstance when you stop and think about how many people are alone in this world.

So save it for tomorrow. Let’s make February 15th a day for sorrow, a day for loneliness and despair. I mean, it is a Monday after all.