I’m single af, and I love Valentine’s Day. What’s not to love? A day full of flowers, chocolates, rom-coms and a variety of love puns sounds like a spectacular day, even if all these things are not coming from an SO. My passion for the love holiday has not always been positive, though.
Growing up, there was no issue with Valentine’s Day. We all made those iconic tissue box-mailboxes to receive valentines from our classmates in. My mom used to gift my sister and I gift cards and candy. Back when we were too young to be in relationships, Valentine’s Day was an easy holiday to like. But in high school I turned cynical, not for any reason other than that I felt I was supposed to, which is the sad part. I didn’t hate Valentine’s Day itself; I hated what I thought it represented—an exclusive holiday that could only be celebrated by those in relationships. What I didn’t realize back then is that I am in a serious and loving relationship with my life, and that is worth celebrating.
With the number of singles having risen 12 percent between 2004 and 2014, as TODAY reports, I think Valentine’s Day is undergoing something of a transformation from a strictly romantic holiday to a celebration of all kinds of love–platonic, romantic, self-love, or otherwise. In a survey conducted by Elite Daily, 37 percent of women said they celebrate all kinds of loving relationships on Valentine’s Day, not just romantic ones.
I was curious about how other girls feel toward V-Day, so I asked some collegiettes if they think it needs to be exclusively about romance. Mariel Tishma, a junior at Columbia College Chicago, says, “The thing we celebrate now doesn’t have to be about romantic love. Also, the original St. Valentine was patron saint of the plague, among other things. So really we should be celebrating not having the plague.”
Personally, I’ve never been happier to be single on Valentine’s Day than this year. I just started dating for the first time ever at the end of last year, and I thought maybe this would be the year that I finally had a romantic someone to celebrate the holiday with. The truth is it didn’t work out between us, and so I’m still single. But you know what, dating that guy made me realize how much I love myself, my life and my freedom (aka my singledom). So this year I am unabashedly celebrating Valentine’s Day alone. It took the potential of a date to make me realize that what I really want on Valentine’s Day is to see my friends, call my parents, and watch ANTM reruns on Hulu while stuffing my face with all the candy. All. The. Candy.
But more than all the discount candy, I love Valentine’s Day because it’s a day that makes me feel so grateful for everyone and everything in my life. Sure, I can feel this way on any day of the year, but today it’s more special because instead of showing love to a significant other, I get to focus on all of the beautiful, romantic elements of my life.
Romance, I believe, is not something that is only experienced within the confines of a relationship. The word “romance” actually dates back to 1300 and was used to refer to the story of hero, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. When I consider romance on these terms, it makes the adventure that is life sound romantic. And I think it is. Life as a single person can be romantic in its own way.
That’s truly what I love about Valentine’s Day: that it is more profound than it appears. On the surface, Valentine’s Day is a commercial holiday designed to make people feel obligated to buy cards and candy and teddy bears and flowers for their loved ones. At the heart of it, though, Valentine’s Day presents us with a beautiful opportunity to focus on all of the amazing things we have going on in our lives.
Above all, today I abide by Walt Whitman’s words: “I celebrate myself.”