Valentine's Day Musings at 31
Valentine's Day.
A day that is just so emotional.
A day filled with so much expectations, so much disappointment, so much stress.
And yes, if you're one of the lucky ones, a day filled with so much love.
It's a day of extremes. Extreme love and happiness, extreme loneliness and sadness, or extreme bitterness. Let's be real, some of those that claim they don't care about the day, go above and beyond to proclaim their indifference. Of course there are the lucky percentage of the population who genuinely just view it as another day, and can truly be unaffected. I aspire to that level of awesomeness.
Now, if you know me, you know I'm a huge proponent for love and celebrating love on Valentine's Day, and every day. The only difference is how I now view things, or if I'm honest, the way I'm working towards viewing things. As I'm writing this, I'm forcing myself to remember past V-Days, and I'm cringing at the memories. This doesn't mean that they were bad. In fact, there were some lovely ones, some sad ones, some lonely ones, but they were all filled with an expectation I had from an external factor. This was either the person I was dating, the person I wanted to date, or the self-pity at the fact there was not even a person in the picture. All these emotions because of one day! To be fair, those expectations already existed in some capacity in my life, but they were magnified on February 14th, and when they didn't manifest, resulted in feelings of inadequacy, or failure. I'm cringing because I let so much of my past emotions be determined by the actions, or rather non-actions of others.
I'm a romantic who loves planning special dates, buying cute presents, and just doing random special things for the people in my life, be it a significant other, family, or friends. This means that while I don't do it expecting anything in return, I do want similar gestures at some point. Is this wrong? Nope. It's just one of my love languages. However, I need to temper my expectations to realise that everyone shows love and affection in different ways, and everyone receives love and affection in different ways (Big shout out to The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman). All I can do is communicate my expectations, and trust that the people in my life provide added joy and happiness in ways I can accept. However, the difficult part of that is knowing when to retreat because the people that you may want certain things from cannot or do not provide it. Life is filled with difficult decisions and realisations, and 2019 is my year for peace. This means that I am continuing on my journey of self-reflection, and being rigid in only keeping in my life those persons and things that bring me joy (shout out Marie Kondo as well for making me analyse everything and whether it sparks joy).
Does this mean that I have no expectations for Valentine's Day? Gosh I wish. Expectations and getting over emotional about personal issues are my kryptonite. But I did say I'm on the journey, not at the end, so while I hope to get there, I'm definitely not there yet. The difference is I am now forcing myself to assess the current situation, and accept beforehand that what I want to happen on that day won't, and my world won't self-combust because of it. Instead I'm reminding myself that life throws you curveballs at every turn, and you need to learn to duck, but also catch those curveballs and throw them back. It just doesn't make sense to hold onto them, dwell on them, and let them erode your sanity.
Also, I'm a huge believer in karma, to the point where you can often hear me saying when I refuse to do anything even remotely bad, that I'm not doing that because I can't afford the karma. Karma in its simplest form means what you put out, you get back, or you get back tenfold. So, sometimes when my life seems to be falling apart, I think about whether I've done any good deeds lately, or if my karma bank is erring on the liability side. I'm an accountant and a nerd so excuse me if you don't get this analogy. It simply means thinking about whether I've done enough good lately, or have just been going through life wrapped up in my own problems. I don't do bad so it's not really a matter of more good deeds than bad. To me, it's more good deeds, or no deeds.
Quick summary of how I live my life a staying on the right side of karma:
- Do no bad because Badx10 will come back at me
- Do good because it will make me feel good in the moment. Also, I can't expect people to treat me great when I am not living that life. I view the good part as more of a "the people you attract in your life are a mirror of you" and I want to attract great people, as opposed to I'm doing good, only to expect good in return. I hope this makes sense. I just don't like doing a good deed, and expecting something because of it. I do it simply because it's the right thing, it's who I am, and who I want to be, and it makes me feel good when I make someone else's day a bit brighter.
Anyways, that was a long-winded, and preachy way of explaining what I will be doing for Valentine's Day this year. I won’t be spending it with a boyfriend. So, I have a couple options.
1) Be pissed and sour;
2) Go home and maybe sulk. I can't say because emotions are fickle. I might be fine. I might cry. I might eat a pint of ice-cream. I can never really tell sometimes.
3) Stay true to myself and who I want to be, and celebrate the day and celebrate love with my rocks, my family.
I choose option number three. Surprised? Me too. That pint of ice-cream does sound good. Kidding..kinda. This just means that all the effort I expect to be spent on me, I spend on others, my parents, and my brothers. Other than the chocolates, or presents, the most important part of this is that I truly enjoy spending time with these humans. It always leaves me feeling happy. In other words, it adds to my happiness tank. So, instead of dwelling on what can't happen, I made plans that I can control that I am certain I will enjoy. I am the type of person that loves celebrating everything, whether Valentine's Day, or Tuesday. I need to be around people who appreciate that even if it's not in their nature to do the same. At this stage in life, I hope you've found your tribe, or if not, are clear on what you want your tribe to represent, because it can make or break how this life goes for you.
Now I feel it is my duty to remind you, and myself that while you need to be aware of your expectations and ensure they are realistic, and fair, this doesn't mean that you don't deserve people in your life who blow these expectations out of the water from time to time. Yes, you should make yourself happy, but those people should be part of enough moments of joy in your life that your happiness tank is never lacking. We are freaking awesome and deserve nothing less.
Happy Valentine's Day my loves! Sending you tight hugs, and the knowledge without a doubt that you are worth it, and you are enough. Light and love always! :)
#fairytalekindagirl
