Me and Valentine’s Day don’t get along. It never washes the dishes, does the laundry or pay the rent and yet I still let it sleep in the guest room. Every time the day that’s named after the patron saint of happy marriages and epilepsy rolls around, I feel lower than Hillary on election night. Online posts featuring symmetrical couples sucking face, more hearts removed from chests than in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”, and a perpetual air of inadequacy surrounding those who aren’t partaking in its narrative of warm beds and euphoric sense of “togetherness.” It’s not that I hate Valentine’s Day, rather it’s been so long since I’ve had a reason to celebrate it that that I make a genuine effort to give it less attention than Donald Trump gives intelligence briefings.
Yet the minute I log onto to facebook, I’m bombarded with so many monologues about “when Jake and I had our first kiss while riding on the back of moose during a trip in the Canadian Wilderness, I knew he was the one for me.” Tumblr ends up having an uptick of black and white gifs of people making out or dry humping each other in a way that is meant to look like they’re part of a 1990s alternative jazz music video though the whole process ends up looking like a kid mashing Barbie and Ken dolls together. The cultural message is clear: “And God declared; if you ain’t got another body to hug you’re doing it wrong.”
Being in love is one of those densely arduous yet spiritually fulfilling experiences that leave tattoos etched onto your lungs and stomach. Yet as college students struggling with discovering our own means of individual fulfillment, trying to cultivate a relationship ought not to become an obsession. If one is able to find genuine intimacy with someone else, good on them, as some are just disposed to achieve such thresholds early. Yet if you find yourself struggling to craft emotional and intimate connections at the collegiate level, it’s nothing to be ashamed about since we all experience romantic education differently. Some may not even want romanticism in the first place and that is also perfectly natural so long as they are able to fulfill psychological/spiritual homeostasis through other means in their life.
Drunken make outs, watching Netflix while naked together, and sex in the arboretum are made out to be religious tenants in the Bible of College. Some achieve those tenants the first night of orientation, others the last hour before graduation, and some decide to neglect them entirely. Love is a subjective process and don’t feel as though you need to experience it as quickly possible. It’s painful and requires more education than a PhD in Chemistry so it is imperative that we go at it at our own pace. If that means binging “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” alone instead of holding hands to “La La Land” on V-Day, go forth indeed.
(featured image source pixabay-skeeze)
ShoutOut! James Madison University 