Happy Valentine’s Day, all. It seems I’ve bluffed my way into a date. I matched with someone on Tinder (rolls eyes in millennial) last month. He asked me out, but I was out of town that week. I told him I’d be back February 12th (with the assumption that no one will want to go on a first date during the minefield that is Single’s Awareness Day week / weekend).
Long story short, I have a date tonight, and I think it will be nice. But, I was just sitting around the house eating fruit and drawing and listening to YouTube videos about the stock market and vibing. And I reminded myself to be mindful of the time because of le date, which made me feel kind of ugh about the whole thing. Anyone who knows me knows I vibe hardest when I’m doing my own thing, and I like my “me time” like I like my Snap streak: unbroken.
It made me laugh inside when I caught myself, because (according to pop culture) if anyone should be on her knees thanking God to have secured a V-Day date by the skin of her teeth, it’s this walking late 90s Cathy Comic, Sex and The City cat lady right here.
And yet.
If you’d told 17-year-old me that 17 years later we would be neither someone’s mother nor wife (nor a bestselling author, or famous actress), I probably would have lay down and died on the spot. Because in that time and at that age, I had it fixed in my mind that my life as a woman, motherhood and being validated by a man were the only ways to have a meaningful life (puke).
And yet.
The life that I’ve led from 17 to 35, one where I was single on way more Valentine’s Days than I was not, has been one so rich and impactful in ways I couldn’t have dreamed of. When I was 17, I did not know that there was a country named Qatar that I could go and teach in, to even have that dream. I have met and learned and loved art and people and languages and customs and cultures. I have shared insight and built bridges on four continents (and counting). I have learned myself, I’ve spoken my truth, and in many cases my truth has coincided and resonated with elements of the larger truths that surround us all the time.
I think of my little sister and nieces and I feel honored to show them that they belong to themselves alone. When I was younger, I feel like our culture really painted a single woman in her mid-thirties as a shrew; someone to pity and dismiss. I might be a bit of a shrew, but I’m proud to be show our daughters that there’s nothing to pity, and I will not be dismissed.
And that the greatest love they will experience in their lives is self love.
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