Valentine’s Day is fascinating to watch.
Every year, couples who have been quiet for months suddenly step into the light. Hard launches, soft launches, and paragraph captions written like acceptance speeches. Carefully curated photo dumps — hand on waist, forehead kiss, blurred city lights in the background.
Public devotion, released on schedule.
And I always wonder — where was this in October? In July? On an ordinary Wednesday when nothing was trending, and no one was watching?
It’s not judgment. It’s curiosity.
Because if I love someone, I don’t want to store it. I don’t want to save it like a draft waiting for approval. I want to show them off in real time. I want to post the blurry picture because I like the way they’re looking at me in it. I want to send songs every single day — not because the chorus screams romance, but because one lyric felt like a private inside joke. I want to romanticize gas stations and rainy errands and late-night food runs. I want a life that feels like a rom-com, not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s alive.
Why does affection need an audience before it feels official?
Why does it take a date stamped in red for some people to go public with something that’s supposed to be constant?
I’m not anti-flowers. I’m not anti-grand gestures. I love spectacle. I love the excess of it. I love the way the world softens for a day.
But love shouldn’t feel like a limited drop. It shouldn’t feel like a brand collaboration. It shouldn’t disappear as soon as the decorations come down.
If I’m proud of someone, I want that pride to leak into everything. Into the way I talk about them. Into the way I look at them across a room. Into random Thursday afternoon posts that have no occasion attached.
I don’t want seasonal romance. I want atmospheric romance. Something that lives in the air year-round.
There was a day — one of those long, layered text conversations that stretched. We were untangling something complicated. Paragraphs stacked on paragraphs. Honest in a way that feels almost surgical. Right in the middle of it — not at the end, not as a closing line, but deliberately placed between two heavy points — was written:
“You are one of the most emotionally intelligent people I know, so just trust yourself.”
It wasn’t romantic in the obvious way. It wasn’t followed by a heart or a dramatic confession. It was precise, intentional, and almost clinical in its calmness. It made everything else we were discussing shrink for a second because I wasn’t being admired for how I looked, or how I cared, or how much I was willing to give. I was being recognized for how I think. For the structure beneath the softness. For the way I move through emotion without drowning in it.
That felt bigger than roses.
It made me realize something: the kind of love I want isn’t just loud — it’s attentive. It’s observant. It’s built on study. If love is art, then it isn’t random. It has composition. It has weight-bearing beams. It requires intention.
Art isn’t created once a year and left untouched. It’s revised. Layered. Lived with.
Valentine’s Day is the exhibition. The polished gallery moment. The framed piece under perfect lighting.
But I’m more interested in the studio — the messy drafts, the daily brushstrokes, and in the quiet decisions no one applauds.
If I ever love loudly, it won’t be because February told me to perform it. It’ll be because I can’t contain it. Because it spills into October. Into July. Into random Wednesdays with no aesthetic filter.
Love shouldn’t need a holiday to be visible. It should feel like an everyday adventure — not curated, not scheduled, not rationed. And maybe that’s the difference. Some people wait for the world to look before they hold hands, whereas I want to, whether anyone’s watching or not.