On February 14 there are three types of people; Those who love Valentines Day, Those who hate it and those whose opinion is dictated by the status of their relationship. I am a member of the first group.
In a world where anger and hate and general nastiness are abundant and good deeds and sincerity is sparse, A day that is dedicated to the good emotions is a diamond in a sack of coal. I know the cynics will say that Valentines Day is a marketing strategy by corporations like Hallmark, but I've never bought a Hallmark card in my life, so what do I care?
This year will be my first real solo Valentines day in a decade, but instead of hiding in bed with a box of tissues, a block of chocolate and a sad movie, I'm going to take myself out on a date and surround myself with loved up couples and their idiotic/cute-as-hell smiles.
Valentines Day is a day dedicated to love, the one day of the year where love trumps hate, and I'm happy to raise my glass to that!
Now, to change the subject quiet a bit... have you ever heard of "Exploding Head Syndrome"? Well, a brief description of what it is follows;
Imagine laying in your bed after a long day, you've been fighting with your pillows and doona for a few hours now, as you do most nights. Your eyes are heavy and you unknowingly feel yourself slipping through that dimly lit avenue between sleep and awake, when...
FUCKING BOOOOOOM!
The loudest, hardest, fastest noise you've heard in your life shoots through your ears, in to your brain and rattles you awake like a shock of 1000 volts.
Your eyes burst open forcing your pupils to contract and then dilate at the speed of light.
You lay still.
You can hear, even feel your heart in your head.
Your chest rises and falls quickly.
As you begin to calm down your breath steadies.
Your heart beats slower.
And then your brain pushes a confusing thought to the front of your mind.
You hear your mind telling you with factual justification;
"That noise came from INSIDE my head"
?
"No, your not losing your mind"
Came my doctors response, which she quickly followed with such words as "Stress", "extreme fatigue", "middle ear" and "seizure"...
"Time to be kind to myself" I thought.
So, in attempt to cure myself, I've dropped one school subject and decided to care less about things in general.
So for the last two weeks I've had a mini holiday from stress. I had a picnics, played a lot of music, did a lot of reading, went to yoga, road tripped to the coast with Mr.X, spent an unusual amount of time in bed, drank too much tea and coffee, did a fair amount of cooking (and eating!!), Painted, played with harmonicas and ukuleles, went for rainy day walks, wrote a lot about nothing, had baths and drank all the alcohol Mr.X and other friends provided me with.
now, it's a strange thing to say, but although I don't feel healthier for it (alcohol, late nights, general laziness and bad food), I definitely feel... well, healthier for it!
So the lesson I learned in the weeks prior to my first solo Valentines Day in almost a decade was... "love".
Not 'how to' or 'when to'. Just 'love', with all its contradictions of simplicity and confusion, pleasure and pain, self love, broken and true love, unrequited, untimely, overwhelming and unsatisfying, unjustified, secretive, overexposed, unruly, never working but never ending, passionate but stifled, geographically incompatible but always incomparable, brilliant love.
shared love
&
self love;
How to look after myself without carrying around the rule book to health, how to enjoy time, rather than count it.
I relearned that even when the love you once shared with a person is tarnished with the imperfections you both helped to create, it's still love. Because from a young age we are taught to love, but not how to stop.
Happy Valentines Day beautiful person!
Enjoy it, no matter who you're spending it with!
Ash.x
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