I’m glad it’s February 15th.
I know plenty of people who hate Valentine’s Day, people who are happily married or in a relationship, and who just don’t want to celebrate because of an arbitrary date on the calendar. I know plenty of people who do enjoy Valentine’s Day, and love getting flowers and candy and jewelry and what have you. And I know loads of people for whom Valentine’s Day is mostly about making a Valentine box with their kids.
But mostly what Valentine’s Day has been to me since I was about 13 years old is this girl who is sitting in her ninth period class (the end of the day) and watching as what seems like every single girl in the room received flowers and balloons and stuffed animals. And even though I knew that none of the office aides was going to bring me a bouquet of roses, my heart leapt every single time that maybe, just maybe, I had a secret admirer and this flower arrangement was meant for me.
When I was in college, I had several professors who very kindly took an interest in my writing and who encouraged me to submit and look beyond life in Rix Mills, and while I still treasure that they liked my writing, I knew that wasn’t the life that I was looking for. The life that I wanted seemed a million miles away-I had no idea at all how to flirt, how to date, how to be anything but awkward. So, when I was 21 years old, and I met this boy who seemingly looked beyond all the backward, shy but loud, strange girl I was and asked me to marry him, it was-I have said this before-it felt like winning the lottery to me. I had a best friend who bought me flowers for no reason at all- I often told people, "Nick may not be perfect, but he is perfect for me."
I relished being a wife and a stay at home mom. As I tend to do, I tried to be the ultimate-I did *all the things* and I made sure that everyone was eating healthy and slathered in sunscreen and never, never watched too much television. I read all the books. I tried my best.
Being a single mom has taken a lot of practice. I’m not who I used to be at all. It’s disconcerting, becoming someone new. There are lots of bits of me that are much better in this new version-I’m more patient, I say yes much more often than no, I listen a lot more than I talk. The girls and I watch old 80s television shows at night and more often than not eat junk food that would never have been allowed from the Old Joy. The girls have seen me fall apart, and so I really saw no reason to act like I know all of the answers. I’m grown up enough to know that life is about more than just doing all the right things, that love is about more than flowers and gifts, and that I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.
So, I’m all of these people on the inside-I’m that girl hoping for a boy to give her flowers, and I’m that woman who knows that no matter how many flowers someone gives you over the course of a lifetime, if they don’t respect you, then ultimately it doesn’t matter.
I hold these two contradictions tight and pray and try my absolute best to believe that somehow I’m not too damaged to win that lottery all over again.
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