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Sparkle (3)
Travel back with me, if you will, to the worst Valentine's Day of my life. (No, really, please, come with me. I hate to go there alone.)
I came home from work to the apartment I shared with my then-boyfriend, a person I could not have handpicked more ill-advisedly if I tried. He was fine (well, until the incident with that girl and all the yelling), I was fine, but together we were that radio that doesn't turn on when you put the batteries in the wrong way. We were positive and positive, negative and negative. Or something.
The first thing I saw when I walked in the door was a large (I'm thinking standard poster-sized) print hanging over our apartment fireplace: an image of two children dressed in Victorian grownup clothes, colorized blush on their cheeks. The little boy knelt down in front of the girl, handing her a rose.
My boyfriend stood there smiling, proud of himself, waiting for my reaction to his mall-bought Mona Lisa.
My reaction was that I hated it. I hated it so much I can't properly describe. I had seen these pictures before, on greeting cards and in the poster store. They creeped me out -- this is just my aesthetic taste, I'm sorry if anyone else loves them, just not for me -- and now one dominated the most prominent wall in my living space. I was also burnt out from working 70-hour weeks as a social worker, and I was over everything, pretty much. He had already complained about the restaurant I "made" us go to for dinner the weekend before. And how could this man I lived with who claimed to love me even if we couldn't really stand each other and needed to break up posthaste not know that I hated this picture and would never hang it on my beautiful plain over-the-fireplace wall in a million years?
Let's just say that I, a person with fairly loud body language and facial expressions, lacked the minimal filter I can usually manage. I don't remember what I said, maybe something akin to "Burble burble sad and upset words blarggggggggghhhhhhh," but it was enough to get me to the bedroom, where I broke down crying. He was at a loss at first, and then somewhere in this fine exchange he got angry. When I emerged from the bedroom at some point in that evening, he had gone to work. The print was taken down, re-rolled, and placed in a bag to return to the store.
Valentine's Day present fail, for both of us. Relationship fail, actually.
I felt badly about it, and truthfully I still do. It's one of those experiences that I look back on and wish I'd been more centered to respond, if not exactly positively, at least more calmly. But along with my own human frailties, I was responding in the context of a relationship that wasn't working on a much deeper level, and I interpreted his lack of understanding of what kind of picture I'd never hang on my wall in a million years to be a sign of that.
Valentine's Day can be a wondrous day of kisses not beginning with Kay and engagements and general giddiness of the American commercial variety, but it can be difficult even in a more functional relationship. You may know the drill: misty watercolored unmet expectations of frills and romance, trying to go out to dinner on one of the most crowded nights in the restaurant year, and, uh, maybe even being with the wrong guy? Somehow I accomplished all of those without even really trying too hard.
I've also had my share of miserable single February 14ths. Convinced the world was against me and my obvious unpartnered awesomeness, I wallowed. I drank the best wine I could afford and journaled furiously -- first on paper, then electronically -- about the injustice, oh the injustice, of being single on this most romantic of days. I may have worn black once or twice. There may have been a list of songs for the dreaded occasion.
And the best V-days, partnered up or single? Entirely random. One year my ex-boyfriend gussied up his living room and made me dinner and a mix CD. He danced even though he hated it and tried to be romantic because he cared. That was nice, and I was the happiest girl in... well, maybe the county, if not the larger geographic area. Another year a number of my best friends also happened to be
