vday gifts and curses

Love is not lacking in my life. I love my friends a lot, my family a lot more, and my brother more than anyone or anything.

Yet, when Valentine's Day rolls around, I always feel anxious. When a person feels anxious, he or she tends to be anxious over something. But I don't know what it is I'm anxious over. When applying the word, it is often in anticipation of a future event or result. But with Valentine's Day I'm not looking forward to anything. I only see the past.

I am the kind of person who relives the past unwillingly. I like to think of myself as a forward thinker, living in the now and working towards tomorrow, but the past always comes back to haunt me. I don't like to bring up past events but apparently close friends and family members do. Sometimes I can muster up a hearty laugh over things that have come to pass, but often times I don't. Most of the time I can't.

If you know me well, and most don't, then you'd know my extensive record of "complicateds" and seeming unrequiteds. In the past 4 years or so I have had 3 men come into my life and awaken in me new ways of feeling. I gave a lot of myself to these relationships and received little to nothing in return, keenly aware of the uneven distribution of time and effort but recklessly hoping I'd be pleasantly surprised. I have had 3 men come into my life. I have learned to love them, each in their own way. And I have watched them all go on to love someone else. Their relationships with their significant others have lasted, but not ours. And the thing is, I'm not bitter or angry or sad. I am happy to know that they are all happy and in love-- even if I am not a part of it. Is this a gift or a curse: to live your days watching the ones you love, love others? I think what's confusing things is that I still love them all. Clearly, not in the same way their significant others love them, but still, a form of love nonetheless. They didn't want my love, and that's ok. So here I am with all this love, and I don't know what to do with it.

I've thought about it and it's not a love that can be employed in the field of humanitarian work I would like to do-- that's a different kind of love and thirst. It's a love that's reserved for a few, but I don't know why it's on keep for only a select people nor do I know for how long. It's just... there, chilling, like unclaimed baggage.

I spent this past Valentine's Day weekend in Palm Springs with two of my friends. Freshman year of college redefined Valentine's Day for me, throwing an incredibly dark veil over the already somber Hallmark holiday (for me, at least). I wanted to change that this year, but once again, the planets did not align in my favor. That Saturday night, while sitting in the dark on the fairway green (the house was situated on a golf course), one of the girls I was with brought him up. Him, the reason why for the past 3 years I spent Valentine's Day in a haze, in bed asleep, skipping class and refusing to step foot outside. I tried to dodge the subject, but once brought up, people tend to want to know the rest, treating it with the eagerness of a child hearing a fantastical new tale. But this is no bedtime story, and people don't get that. All 3 instances, all 3 relationships have ended abruptly and without any closure, and that just sucks.

This sounds so self-pitying, but allow me this one post. I will brush this aside like always, but that's just it: it's always set to the side until someone else wants to bring it up and I am instantly propelled into this weird cycle of analyzing how I feel and then coming to terms with my seeming acceptance of it all. Seeming? No, I have, I have. I... don't really know what the point of this entry was. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this Valentine's Day was like all the other past ones, except in a different zip code and with lots and lots of senior citizens.

I hope everyone had a good long weekend and is doing well. I haven't been out much so I feel like I haven't seen many familiar faces. Thank God for Norby, who somehow always always manages to make me feel special. And thank God for love...because although I may not "be someone's", I am someone who has love. And that is enough.