This week I got two Valentine’s cards in the mail. They were lovely and thoughtful and a great reminder that Singles Awareness Day is just nine short days away! Of course, when I mentioned this elsewhere I got fussed at for calling it Singles Awareness Day, because I’m not single. Single or not though, the older I get the sillier I feel about most gift and Other People Awareness holidays. Not because I dislike people or gifts, but because I like people and gifts so much that I start to resent the added pressure of having to produce gifts and feelings on demand when I already happily do those things year round. It’s kind of like how sometimes you realize that you’re breathing and then it becomes harder to actually regulate your breath. You always end up breathing heavier or longer or shorter than you usually do because you’re suddenly self-conscious about the way your body operates. And that, my friends, is silly.
In general I shy away from writing about love in favor of tackling anger or confusion or fear, but one of the writing groups I’m a part of challenged its members to write a bit about it this month. It’s prompted a lot of thoughts and very few actual plot ideas. It’s been a frustrating experience, but in my most uncharitable moments that’s kind of how I feel about the subject anyway.
My feelings about love aren’t nearly as complicated as my feelings about hope, but they’re still a little to the left of the way that I was taught to feel about love as a child. Love is hard work. It’s easy for me to type those four words, but as I sit here trying to pull together a poem or short bit of prose about how love is hard work I find myself stumbling over all the heavy handedness and obviousness of the initial thought. The closest I’ve come is this paragraph.
Love, Joanie had found, was often rather dull. It was full of the trivial and mundane occurrences of daily life multiplied by the amount of people you felt love for. It lived in an entirely different place than passion and curiosity and all of the things that poets would tell you that love actually was. In reality, Joanie felt that love merely hid within those things, dressing itself up as something desirable in the same way that Sal wore bright jewelry. It was the reason that Joanie wouldn’t tell Sal that she loved her. The term was simply inadequate for the way that she was sometimes caught off guard by just how much affection and devotion she could feel for one person. She didn’t ever share these thoughts, so she couldn’t really blame Sal for the hurt that was harboured over Joanie not returning her affection.
It’s still heavy handed and obvious, but at least it gives me something more concrete to work with.
I have been dreadful at treating writing like a second job for the last month. I really need to work on that.
February 6, 2012 at 8:09 am
I want to apologize for my comments coming across as “fuss[ing] at” you! This is what I get for trying to start conversations, heh. *facepalm* Honestly, mostly what I just meant was that hearing the day called that from someone who isn’t single was odd and unexpected to me, and I’ve been around SJish places too often in the last year and I had lots of awkward feelings about that, which clearly I communicated poorly.
I do agree with you that Greeting Card Holidays are the worst, and the pressure the 14th of Feb puts on people to Do Your Relationship THIS Way Or Else is obnoxious at best.
February 6, 2012 at 8:14 am
Ha. I didn’t even mean you. You communicated things just fine. Lisa told me yesterday that I wasn’t allowed to say that. 😉
February 6, 2012 at 9:51 am
Oh, okay. Good. Well, good for you and me, less good for you and Lisa.
Also, my stressing over my potential blunder has unleashed Thoughts, so there will probably be an LJ post later. Hopefully I won’t make a non-thing into a bad thing!
February 6, 2012 at 9:56 am
And apparently my email wasn’t enough to log me in. D’oh.
February 6, 2012 at 10:09 am
Hee. Note to self, don’t just respond over email!
I’m sorry that comment stressed you out. I promise that if I have an actual issue with anything you say I’ll let you know. I don’t even really have an issue with what Lisa said, I’m just sort of being silly and hyperbolic about the whole thing, as I do. Kidding, really. And I’ll look forward to that post if you make it.
February 6, 2012 at 12:24 pm
I’m calling today Visible Insecurities Day, because it feels like everything’s getting kicked a bit today. So bad timing for me, that’s all. I appreciate you setting me straight, though. ❤ (But thankfully not TOO straight, LOL.)
February 6, 2012 at 12:36 pm
I would never endeavor to set someone too straight. In fact, I might just endeavor to set people less straight on occasion. 😉
February 6, 2012 at 12:53 pm
That is one of the many things I love about you. ❤
February 6, 2012 at 8:51 am
I think you touch on something that is a really wonderful thought: many people conflate love and passion, thinking that they are the same thing, or that you can’t have one without the other. It makes love this giant, all-consuming fire, when really, sometimes it’s just a little warmth in the darkness.
February 6, 2012 at 9:47 am
Exactly. And it’s not even those people who are constantly looking for that huge passionate thing that I worry about the most. I worry about the people who know that sometimes it’s a little warmth in the darkness but continue to overlook that because it isn’t what other people say it should be. Eventually, most people will have to let go of or rearrange their fairy tales. Or maybe we should just write some new ones.
February 6, 2012 at 8:58 am
I always end up celebrating these things, albeit very late, because i like getting people things. in fact, i love buying my girlfriend sill stuff – i do it even without a day in mind.
writing about love is tough. love is work, i couldn’t agree more. it is also the act of deciding to put work into something. as a kid, i figured it would never fall in love – it continued on that way for a while, til i sort of fell into it. now it makes sense, somewhat, but, not really
writing about that though? gosh, even harder.
February 6, 2012 at 10:07 am
I do the same thing. I’ll just see things that I think people will like and pick them up and hand them over when I remember to. I’m dreadful about surprises so it’s impossible for me to find a gift and then hold on to it until a birthday or holiday rolls around. I want people to be excited now!
But yes. I went through quite a growing period where I realized that love just wasn’t what I’d been told it was and that it was okay to make your own. Even that you HAD to make your own. And then, listening to my mother talk about her marriage to my father over the last couple of years has made it even more interesting in terms of figuring out what love is and how it changes over time.