Thursday, February 14, 2008

VD

This is my attempt to not be bitter about the holiday celebrated on February 14. That sound you hear is an attempted smile through gritted teeth. I actually don't have anything against Valentines/Singles Awareness/Whatevs Day -- I'm more resentful of the way my mind feels the need to analyze and deconstruct every aspect and nuance generated by the presence of this Hallmark holiday.

I could rehash previous posts on the subject of relationships, but that's not really where I won't to go with this. Basically, I can count on a shop teacher's hand the number of romantic relationships I have had and none of them overlapped with V Day. This, I fear, may have serious consequences. The first one that jumps to mind is the fact that I have no clue as to what I'm doing. Take the crush for example. Do you know how long it took me to get up the courage to say something? Four months. That's...bad pacing. And even then it was somewhat clumsy -- I'd give it a B+ performance. The concern here is that I feel like I've missed a critical learning window for how to establish relationships and the mores of dating. I could blame society, or the gay thing, or some voodoo curse, but besides not actually addressing the problem, it avoids the fact that the common denominator is me.

When I woke up this morning, I came up with the following analogy to better illustrate my point. Imagine you are in a gym class playing dodgeball. Now, let's say you didn't know the rules of the game and you are the first one out. You are standing on the sidelines waiting for the next game to start. You are watching the game, but still no one has explained the rules to you. The next game starts and you are first out again, and the cycle repeats. You are able to pick up aspects here and there, but strategy or how to last more than 5 seconds aren't picked up.

So this analogy is a little tortured, but hopefully you get what I'm saying. I don't even know why I want someone special in my life: I seem to be quite capable of feeling sorry for myself. Thank you for indulging.

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