Happy Stupid Love Day

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

I’m not a huge fan of Valentine’s Day. Most people who say that are either single and lying or coupled and tired. Personally, my birthday is only a week before it, so everyone I’ve ever known romantically has lumped my birthday and Valentine’s Day together, the same thing that happens to kids born on Christmas Eve. “These flowers are for your birthday and Valentine’s Day.”

This Valentine’s Day, I went to bed with a bronchial cough and woke up with my period, the white bedsheets stained with a large pool of blood. An itchy rash has erupted on my left arm; poison ivy or poison oak, or some other poison thing I must have run into on the trails. Meanwhile, Mike had his head cut open to remove cancerous cells from what he thought was a cyst, but turns out, was a small tumor. He came home later that day and lay in bed in the dark, his head throbbing in pain from having a knife stuck in it (he’s fine). On Valentine’s Day evening, we watched Jim Jeffries on Netflix, took a CBD gummy, and went to bed early. Despite not celebrating the happy-stupid-love day, I felt more love for Mike than ever before. Watching someone you love endure pain is painful, too.

The stupid thing about Valentine’s Day isn’t the part where you confess undying love or write your partner a note, or buy someone you love a gift. The stupid thing…