This goes out to all the singles or unattached people who are not keen on Valentine's Day. Singledom in a world full of couples can trigger of a depression avalanche.
If you are in the dating trenches, this is the time of year you really want to hide. Maybe you are looking for Mr. Right, your soul mate, the man of your dreams -- or only Mr. Right Now.
V-Day Frenzy, I call the big hype around 14th of February.
Wherever you go, something will remind you that this important day is to celebrate love. Shop displays with everything in red from cards to flowers, from teddy bears to underwear, from chocolates to candles, not to mention red balloons labeled, "For the one I love this Valentine." What if you don't have one?
Cards the size of paintings annoy the hell out of you, "To the love of my life." What if there isn't any? Or you lost it? Then the jewelers' commercials whetting people's appetites for diamonds are positively overkill.
Some lucky daters secure advertising space in a local paper. So that the world can see that they have a sweetheart who loves them and that they are not alone on this heavenly day.
And to be hoping that some unknown stranger had secretly been pining for your attention sounds like a child's fairy tale or something pubescent teenagers occupy themselves with.
The commercialism surrounding V-Day rubs in singledom like salt in a paper cut.
You start to see couples everywhere. Why does everybody else around you seem to be falling in love when you are on your own? That everybody seems to have an invitation to a love fest except you?
It seems to be a well-accepted fact of life that people end up in marriages or at least in relationships; that we all set off in life alone but at a certain age we become part of a happy couple. Why do people get married? For company or romantic reasons, or the old sexual urge, which could be satisfied otherwise? Or how much are external factors like finances and security in play?
Life does not prepare us enough, nor is it on the curriculum of any school or degree course. Our hormones keep pushing us into that direction of mating, sometimes successfully, sometimes erroneously. Yet we all stumble on, looking for another chance in this school of hard knocks, sometimes resigning ourselves to not having any luck in this game of love.
You're not the only one in the world who feels this way, trust me. Think of it this way: It's just another day for selling merchandise at a time of year, which would otherwise be very quiet with Christmas over and Easter far away. Somebody needs to boost the economy, I understand. The next date on the calendar will be St. Patrick's Day. Just like the fad of Mother's Day, don't you think? I've been there. Now happily married, however. I do understand.
Someone should throw an anti-Valentine Party. Or invite a few lonely neighbors. Or spend an hour in a nursing home. Cheer up! We have a saying in German: Men/women are like buses. There is another one just around the corner.
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