I didn’t get married until WAY late in life so I’m recently familiar with both sides of the Valentine’s Day experience. This day can bring angst, apathy, just a whole lot of thought about who you’d like to have in your life or at a minimum what type of person you’d like to have. Going to work being surrounded by co-workers receiving flowers and seeing others purchase their last minute gifts from Sam the vendor was the norm for me. Then there were those dreaded words, “Cheryl, Mr. So-and-So” left you a card/gift; never what I wanted to hear. What I wanted to hear on Valentine’s Day wasn’t so much the focus. Hearing an “I love you” on Valentine’s Day is sweet but catch me on a Wednesday when my PMS is in overdrive, my hair needs to be washed, and I have a wedgie THEN tell me you love me; that carries some weight. I was more consumed with what I wanted to say as a single woman on Valentine’s Day, and it still applies to me as a married woman: I AM DOING JUST FINE!!!
I recall being at the engagement party of a friend of mine when all the married people converged on me. Asking me why I was still single, regaling me with stories of how lovely it is to be married and engage in God-sanctioned-sex. Well if you read a bit of me and my personality through this blog, you’re right in your assumption that THAT didn’t go well. Not for them it didn’t. I have also been invited to dinner at the house of a married couple only to find out that there was a man there waiting to meet me. There I am stranded, bad food, odd company, and me trying not to cuss everyone within a 10 mile radius. Yes, some of these people had the health of my heart as their prime focus but my heart ain’t all that makes me tick. There was always this struggle with how to tell people I AM DOING JUST FINE as a single woman and balance it with the reality that I had lonely days without looking weak, without being ashamed of my vulnerability.
These experiences have shaped me as a married woman. I love being married, not just today but everyday. Marriage is a new blessing, not the blessing that takes me to a level of attainment that crowns me queen over the peasant people formerly known as my single brothers and sisters. It is not my assumption that everyday of being single is a day of misery. That’s just not the way it really is unless you have some major deficiency. I’ll end with this, don’t make a lifelong decision based on the fleeting feelings that come along with a day like today. Don’t be pressed, as my nieces and nephews say, and expose yourself to someone or something that wouldn’t usually have an appeal just for the sake of having a Valentine’s Day feeling.