I will finally admit this publicly…

I HATE Valentine’s Day.

I have resisted saying this out loud for, oh, the last 10 years because I didn’t want to be a cliche. I have privately told others that my deep aversion to what I’ve come to call “V Day” is grounded in a romantic notion that love and devotion shouldn’t need a day where it is expected to be expressed. I do believe that … but it’s not why I hate Feb. 14.

No, I *have* become a cliche: I hate Valentine’s Day because I am hard pressed to remember when in my life it has gone well.

Well, that’s not true; I remember making a fantastic valentine’s box one time in grade school by using aluminum foil and red/pink construction paper hearts, and I remember it well because I thought the red and pink looked so fabulous next to the shiny silver. I don’t even remember what else happened… only that I *loved* that box.

What I do remember well are these things…

I remember my mom giving me a ring one year (I think it was NOT actually for V Day) that had been prominently advertised in our town’s best jewelry store as a Valentine’s Day gift … I wanted it from the guy on whom I had a huge crush throughout high school. Instead, my mom gave it to me (how sad is that?!), and one of my friends got the same ring from HER boyfriend. (Which just made it suck even more, because I had to see it daily.)

I remember my freshman year of college (10 years ago this week) going to extraordinary, superhuman effort (planning began well before Christmas) to do a litany of special things for the guy I was in love with at the time. I had to work so hard in part because he lived 1,000 miles away. I poured my heart out. And then, around 7 p.m. on Valentine’s Day itself, my RA quietly knocked on my door with two mismatched, shriveled up carnations that said guy had begged him to go buy for me, because the asshole hadn’t planned to do anything and felt guilty when he realized just how much *I* had done. That was when I realized, for the first time, that I had been seriously deluded in that “relationship” (if you want to call it that).

Four years ago, I had a V Day that literally caused the demise of the best relationship I’d had to that point. Not only did I break a guy’s heart, but I did it in a way that was so cold and so heartless … the extent to which he will (I pray every year on this day, Feb. 13) never know. Ending the relationship was, I will forever believe, the right thing to do; it was my method that was deplorable. If ever there was a chance I could have recovered from the V Day Debacle of 1996, the much-greater hurt that flowed from the Great V Day Debacle of 2002 sealed my fate in the annals of the bitter opponents to Feb. 14.

I know everyone wants me to say that, in my relationship with my now-fiance, I have found reason to once again believe in V Day. I wish I could. I will say that Daniel has been extremely accommodating to my aversion to the forced celebration of V Day; last year we had a nice dinner on a day that was not Feb. 14, and on Saturday I came home from my adventures in Denton to find lilies (my favorite type of flower) waiting on a newly cleaned kitchen counter. For me, that gesture was HUGE.

Still, February stings, and knowing now things I didn’t know last time out doesn’t help. Instead, it just makes me want to hibernate. If only I had some snow on the ground to blame.