Valentine’s Day

Since this is the first week of Her Headache and only my second post (not to mention Valentine’s Day), I will post on the topic of love, and next week shall be the first instalment of Fiction Friday.

All You Need Is Love
Love Can Move Mountains
Love is a many splendored thing.

The Beatles were particularly good at writing catchy little tunes about the topic and there are so many sayings out there about it. The love stories to be found in literature through the ages are endless. It’s everywhere we look and on this day especially.

There’s definitely a sense of pressure. There’s the pressure to “perform”, to be romantic, and to make with the huge sweeping gestures of affection and declarations of love: roses, chocolates, jewelry just to name a few. Then, on the other side of the spectrum, there are the Haters, saying things like: it’s just another day, why should we have to wait for a day to express how we’re feeling, and the ever-so-common statements of bitterness and resentment and putting on a cover because someone is single. I, for one, fit somewhere in the middle, like usual. (I am hardly ever one extreme or the other.)

We have days to mark all sorts of things. On Christmas people are fond of commenting on the overlaying of love and good will, of which they protest should be the way it always is. We, as a society, need something to celebrate now and then, and a specific day to tell us when.

On this Valentine’s Day I use the occasion to remind myself how lucky I am to have found such an amazing person. I think of all the past Valentine’s Days I spent as that bitter, lonely, unattached girl. I survived them all and now here I am.

A better way to look at it, as I’ve just recently heard from a very wise friend, is to celebrate love in all its forms: romantic love, love of family and friends, and importantly the love of oneself.
She says it best: “I think it’s important to take some time in our busy schedules to affirm love, but I don’t think it necessarily has to be about romantic love, and certainly not commercialized love. We can celebrate the joy of being near our friends or the gratitude of having a supportive family or the freedom of being able to stand on our own and love ourselves.

I am not an overly mushy person, but I feel strongly and deeply and I try to show that to those I love, when I can. I am always working harder to express myself more openly, to say how I am feeling, and to make sure they hear my words because I do feel so much inside; so much that it overflows and I like to think that’s what the whole her headache thing is about. I have too much going on inside my head, bursting to get out and causing pain and discomfort along the way.

I also love February 14th because the day is symbolized by the colour red (my favourite colour) and by my beloved chocolate. These two things sell it right away, with love being the thing that ties it all together for me of course.

So I try to focus, on this day and in all others, on the positive: love and happiness, rather than on the negativity and bitterness. Most days I’m a glass half full kind of girl, with the occasional exception. Love is all around us, in the air, and we can find it if we choose to look for it. So I say: why not have a day to celebrate such a positive thing in the world. We could all use more of that in our lives.

And now, to end only my second ever blog post, a poem to mark the day. This one’s dedicated to the one I love.

Love: Through The Four Senses

His presence in my life since that very first day:

His smell draws me in; an indescribable thing…
His touch lessens the pain down deep.
His laugh and his voice are my drug of choice.
With his kiss, off my feet he could sweep.

My fifth sense:

The feeling I get when he walks in a room.
The memories we’ve made and will make.
My heart skips a beat; my stomach dives and flips.
Connections I know I can’t break.

On the Road of Life

The things we’ve seen and shared and done.
With him, oh to travel the world.
A future where our dreams come true.
I’ve never had so much fun.

He understands these things I must bare.
He knows better than most, life’s not fair.
HE accepts me for me, although I can’t see.
But his beauty inside and out makes me free.

In conclusion:

One look from him;
My smile can’t hide for long.
This stab at poetry isn’t so good.
Wishing I could say all this in a song.