Happy Schmalentine’s Day

God, I hate Valentine’s Day. Always have, always will.

Well, I take that back. I liked it when I was in elementary school and we got to give cards and candy to all our classmates and I liked making my “mailbox” for the valentines out of a paper bag and glitter.

But from middle school on, I hated it.

I hated being single, feeling alone and unloved.

I hated only getting chocolate from my parents, never a boyfriend.

I hated it in high school, because I never got a bouquet of red roses or a fancy dinner out of it.

I hated it in college, because I felt like I needed to have some great plan for every February 14, but I never did.

I hated it after college, even if I had a boyfriend at the time, because by then I could see how it was mostly just a fictitious advertising-and-marketing-created event, not an important holiday of any substance. (Not unlike Christmas.)

My worst Valentine’s day ever was circa 2007 when I broke off what was supposed to be the 10-day master cleanse on day 4, by eating Hershey’s milk chocolate kisses that had been given to me by my bilingual third grade students at school that day. I had a boyfriend at the time but he was an active member of the military and a slimy douche bag, to put it nicely.

Word to the wise: do not break off a detox with Hershey’s chocolate. Also, do not date slimy douche bags.

The best Valentine’s Day was a couple of years later, when I went out to dinner in central Austin with my best girlfriend and her awesome dad, a conservative Christian, Republican lawyer from West Texas.

Now, I’m married and living in Guatemala, where my Colombian husband and I don’t do anything special for Valentine’s Day. (Here, it’s called Dia de Cariño.) Fortunately, our day-to-day lives are full of care, love, sweetness and romance!