I’m sure you’re all far too familiar with how much I despise Hallmark-greeting-card-fakey-bullshit holidays like Valentine’s Day - or as I generally refer to it: Singles Awareness Day. The black parade continues year after year, not just because I’m bitter, but because the older we get the more pressure there seems to be from society to conform and join the masses of pairs. It sure doesn’t help that the dreaded holiday falls smack-dab at the three-quarters-through-but-not-quite-there mark of Canadian Winter, a time when seasonal depression is pretty much guaranteed to be at a peak.
But there are ways of getting through the dreaded day alone - we’re all still here aren’t we -and I figured that I would share what I did yesterday/today (this week has been one big emotional roller coaster-dumping ground of drama, so I needed 2 days to start feeling functional again) so that you all know that you’re not alone in this.
Step 1: Read a book that makes you laugh so much that you can’t stop. Preferably so much that your abs hurt afterwards (added workout bonus!). My pick this year was Douglas Coupland’s JPod, since there’s a reason why I can’t read this book in public.
Step 2: Chocolate. Lots of it. (Who are we kidding, we have chocolate every weekend).
Step 3: Watch a favourite old movie, while painting your nails. For maximum nostalgia pick a 90s movie, since it’s guaranteed to make you laugh at how young you once were, and the nail polish will definitely be a flashback for any child of the 90s (how many Wet n’ Wild polishes do you still have that are probably calcified - don’t lie). A slasher film also works well if we’re feeling a little more violent than usual - though I usually save those for Christmas. This year I watched Almost Famous and painted my nails with China Glaze’s “Heart of Africa,” a nice heart-vein red, so I figure I struck a good balance between nostalgia and latent murderous tendencies.
Step 4: Turn on you iPod on shuffle, put on your most kick-ass shoes, and dance around your apartment like a crazy person. This isn’t something we can generally do with boys around (they don’t seem to understand the need for crazy dancing or our obsession with Much Dance 1997), so now is the time to live it up! I spent a few tracks wallowing in the awesomeness that is late-1990s/early-2000s music before settling firmly into a Green Day-fueled cycle of punk-rock. Their songs are bitter without being too angry, and they’ll always remind me of the various times in my life when things have been really awesome (their album releases are quite timely, coincidentally).
Step 5: Come to the realization that it’s them, and not you. Chances are you’ve been waiting patiently by the phone, or waiting patiently by the phone after being assertive, or getting blown off for the third time in a row (seriously). Trust me darling, it’s not you. When it comes down to it, we all know for a fact that there are a hell of a lot more Jack Bergers than Mr. Bigs out in the dating pool. Thankfully, those of us who are smart (read: practical) took another life lesson from Sex & the City to heart and let our BFFs be our soul mates - after all they generally don’t forget our birthdays, whine about how many shoes we own, stop talking to us for a week, or break our hearts.
So here’s to my girls, you know who you are!
*shoes by Michael Antontio; vintage necklaces
