Valentines.
Feb. 15th, 2012 12:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leahbobet(I'm surprised. I didn't think I'd have anything to say about this.)
I am not a great observer of Valentine's Day. I'm single at the moment, and mildly scorched from my most recent escapade de coeur*, and just a little generally work-overwhelmed besides, these days. The plan for tonight was to go down to Queen and Ossington to see one of the guys from Tokyo Police Club and one of the guys from Born Ruffians play a set, but I got home and I was tired, and Dr. My Roommate was tired, so we called the whole thing off, and instead I have been curled up in my bed with a cup of spicy cherry tea, reading fiction.
Life is very busy these days, and so far for 2012, very demanding. Carving out the space to just read a whole book, cover to cover, was like being given a precious gift of quiet; an internal reprieve. For the first day in what probably feels like longer than it practically has been, I had a rest.
So that was the last Valentine's Day of my twenties.
I want to say I do not get the anti-Valentine's stuff. I feel like there was a lot of it this year, and I don't know if that's just the circles I move in, or I'm sensitized to it, or what. I can't say that: I do get it, in a lot of ways. I get lonely too. I would have enjoyed having a lap to rest my head in while I read that book tonight, and an idle kiss or two between pouring cups of tea.
Thing is, thing is; and there is always a thing, because otherwise I wouldn't have taken to my keyboard, if there wasn't a thing.
There is a danger, I think, that in rejecting being told how to love and enjoy, in rejecting what can feel like pressure and proscription and judgment, we go too far and reject the idea that really, to love and enjoy is generally a really nourishing thing to do; that in trying to wriggle out of the trap of that dominant social narrative owning us, we go all the way to the other side into anger and active rejection, and then it just owns us from the other direction. Or, in less fancy talk: All the people on my Facebook talking about how much Valentine's Day sucked were still grouped under "X many posts about Valentine's Day" when I hit the newsfeed.
I don't know what point I'm making here. Perhaps it is that love is not all, but it's not nothing. Perhaps that active, defensive rejection is not escape, but can turn into a different kind of bondage. Perhaps that you can, when you're about to turn 30, just spend the evening reading a goofy political novel and drinking tea under your comforter, and the shrieking voices that would have something to say about that and what that means, who that means you are, don't and won't actually matter if you legitimately are where you want to be.
And that doesn't mean I have to say And what of it?, and that doesn't mean I have to pretend that it makes me perfectly happy to not have that lap to rest my head in, that kiss here and there, a pair of knees tucked up behind mine like a glove. It doesn't. I miss that. I want it and feel the lack of it, and human emotion is not some either/or, binary, side-taking exercise.
We can want those things, and not have to be Unhappy People for wanting what we don't presently have. And we can spend Valentine's Day evening with a book, and feel meltingly content with it, without stacking it up, measuring-stick, against some other place or person we were Supposed To Be.
Because here is where we are, and the only real choice, in the moment, is whether we're going to be happy or sad in the place we're at.
I guess that's what I wanted to say.
*Yes, I have escapades, and escapade is usually the right word for the job. I don't often mention them. Neither a gentleman nor a lady kisses and tells the whole damn Internet.
I am not a great observer of Valentine's Day. I'm single at the moment, and mildly scorched from my most recent escapade de coeur*, and just a little generally work-overwhelmed besides, these days. The plan for tonight was to go down to Queen and Ossington to see one of the guys from Tokyo Police Club and one of the guys from Born Ruffians play a set, but I got home and I was tired, and Dr. My Roommate was tired, so we called the whole thing off, and instead I have been curled up in my bed with a cup of spicy cherry tea, reading fiction.
Life is very busy these days, and so far for 2012, very demanding. Carving out the space to just read a whole book, cover to cover, was like being given a precious gift of quiet; an internal reprieve. For the first day in what probably feels like longer than it practically has been, I had a rest.
So that was the last Valentine's Day of my twenties.
I want to say I do not get the anti-Valentine's stuff. I feel like there was a lot of it this year, and I don't know if that's just the circles I move in, or I'm sensitized to it, or what. I can't say that: I do get it, in a lot of ways. I get lonely too. I would have enjoyed having a lap to rest my head in while I read that book tonight, and an idle kiss or two between pouring cups of tea.
Thing is, thing is; and there is always a thing, because otherwise I wouldn't have taken to my keyboard, if there wasn't a thing.
There is a danger, I think, that in rejecting being told how to love and enjoy, in rejecting what can feel like pressure and proscription and judgment, we go too far and reject the idea that really, to love and enjoy is generally a really nourishing thing to do; that in trying to wriggle out of the trap of that dominant social narrative owning us, we go all the way to the other side into anger and active rejection, and then it just owns us from the other direction. Or, in less fancy talk: All the people on my Facebook talking about how much Valentine's Day sucked were still grouped under "X many posts about Valentine's Day" when I hit the newsfeed.
I don't know what point I'm making here. Perhaps it is that love is not all, but it's not nothing. Perhaps that active, defensive rejection is not escape, but can turn into a different kind of bondage. Perhaps that you can, when you're about to turn 30, just spend the evening reading a goofy political novel and drinking tea under your comforter, and the shrieking voices that would have something to say about that and what that means, who that means you are, don't and won't actually matter if you legitimately are where you want to be.
And that doesn't mean I have to say And what of it?, and that doesn't mean I have to pretend that it makes me perfectly happy to not have that lap to rest my head in, that kiss here and there, a pair of knees tucked up behind mine like a glove. It doesn't. I miss that. I want it and feel the lack of it, and human emotion is not some either/or, binary, side-taking exercise.
We can want those things, and not have to be Unhappy People for wanting what we don't presently have. And we can spend Valentine's Day evening with a book, and feel meltingly content with it, without stacking it up, measuring-stick, against some other place or person we were Supposed To Be.
Because here is where we are, and the only real choice, in the moment, is whether we're going to be happy or sad in the place we're at.
I guess that's what I wanted to say.
*Yes, I have escapades, and escapade is usually the right word for the job. I don't often mention them. Neither a gentleman nor a lady kisses and tells the whole damn Internet.
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no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 07:12 am (UTC)Though I admit sometimes I do kiss and tell.
Does it matter if I only do things like that once every three-to-five years?
Oh, probably.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 03:19 pm (UTC)(Also, I like your boy stories.)
no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 07:16 pm (UTC)It was a pretty solid book. Kind of a dude book, but fun enough.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 01:51 pm (UTC)Love is neat. It is not the only thing. These two statements don't have to be at war with each other, and in fact, both convey their meaning more truly when they're not.
Well said!
no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 03:03 pm (UTC)I also want to say that I think this continues, this thing: "We can want those things, and not have to be Unhappy People for wanting what we don't presently have." Because I want to have a baby. I want to be the mom of someone tiny and importunate who eventually grows less tiny (note that I make no assumptions, given the environment and likely genetic pool of this hypothetical creature, about less importunate). I do, and there are various complicated factors that are making that not possible at this time. And I am having trouble finding room in our cultural narrative between, "I am blissfully child-free and stop assuming I want children!" and, "I am shattered with grief because I do not have a child." I have friends who fall into each of those categories. I am not them. Maybe at some point I will find that instead of being not them, I was in a superposition of them and the cesium atom has done something or other and I am now one or the other. Maybe not. But wanting and not having: it is not actually always misery. Sometimes it is a thing next to other things, and the other things it is next to are good and bad and mediocre.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 03:23 pm (UTC)Yeah. The cultural narrative tends to certain extremes on so many things. And that's not people.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 10:15 pm (UTC)But I love you both.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 03:49 pm (UTC)*raises hand* Pretender. Guilty.
Overall, you're about a million miles better at this than me.
I am glad you have escapades, and also books. Both of these things are very good.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 07:19 pm (UTC)(And I doubt I am that good at things, or that you are that bad. I double-doubt those things in conjunction.)
no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-15 07:20 pm (UTC)