For us singles, watching couples walk hand in hand can be both gratifying and grating all at once. You can’t help but wonder when your warm, soft, little hand will come to clutch yours or if it ever will at all. Who will wait for you in the snow with a rose in hand, expecting only your smile in return? Whose chocolates will you sample in the comfort of your apartment as you smile stupidly into a television screen? Whose kisses will give life to your dry, cracked winter lips? Who is your bohème or whose bohème are you? Or are you simply un(e) mal-aimé(e)?
If the question that you answer with a “yes” is the final one let me reassure you that there is nothing wrong. Furthermore, rest assured that you can have a valentine that the coupled among us no longer can. If at this time one cannot have a love affair with another, then it becomes imperative to have a most passionate one with oneself. If nobody will give you a memory to fondle passionately in the middle of the night, then you give yourself one.
Let me explain further. I am an only child. I learned at a young age to be my own entertainment. There was no brother or sister to serve as a partner in crime. So I was my own storyteller, my own actor, my own comedian. In time, it is fitting perhaps that I became a poet. You see, poetry is a solitary profession. It needs contemplation, long walks alone in the frigid streets of an increasingly blue, grimy and crime infested city. It involves stradling multiple worlds at once. This cannot be done when distracted by another person, especially a lover. The worlds that a poet creates are little valentines to self, intelligible in full only to the self. Many can try to interpret and some will no doubt will paint a reasonably accurate picture of the world of the poet, and yet, they will fall short because it is not their world to live and experience. It is almost like the poet creates for himself a series of diverse little amusement parks, scary, sad, thrilling, or perhaps even stale and boring. These solitary adventures are little love letters to self. They are a way of treating yourself to the experiences that life has to offer.
Now enough about the poet and enough about me. Why does this matter to you? Or starters, there is something to be said about living poetically. And note, one need not be a poet to do such a thing. What does that mean? Well, I define it as living a life free of constraints pertaining to how one ought to live that comes from family, friends and society. For example, society implies us to be a failure of sorts if not yet married or at least in some form of committed relationship at thirty. Reality is that one is ready for love when one is ready.
Meanwhile, one can have a self-love affair free of interrogations of where you will be and why and with whom. You can explore yourself fully unconstrained. Go to a market and go into that Chinese bakery you had been eying for three weeks, or that Jamaican restaurant for dinner. Why not? Take yourself on a date. Go to that French cafe and completely lose track of time listening to Aznavour, Gainsbourg and Piaf. Romance yourself if nobody else will. After all, who will do it better? The latte will taste better without the pestering of someone who has somewhere else to be. The egg tart will be more enjoyable with light, traditional music than with the din of somebody nagging you that it’s time to go home.
When you’re your own valentine, you are the master of your own time. Enjoy this period because time is the ultimate luxury, that is, the one that never returns. Use your single time to discover everything that is interesting about yourself and the world around you. The couples holding hands today may become bitter enemies tomorrow, or they may be happy forever. Ultimately, it does not affect you. If you want to find love, the time will come through the process of exposure. If not, then that is fine too. This day need not be torture, and it need not be longing, but it need be a day in which you re-discover your natural sense of amour propre. If you have no one to kiss goodnight, then kiss yourself good night. If there is nobody to hear a “je t’aime”, say it to the one person that matters the most. A French kiss to the ego never hurt. It feels good to be as high as the Eiffel Tower on Valentine’s Day self-love. Et maintenant, do remember, “c’est la rose l’important”. The rose is important; and that rose is you.
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