Valentine's Day, the best or worst day of the year, has come and gone. The best if you're in a loving relationship, or you just started dating someone and you're still in that honeymoon phase. The worst, if you're a guy and have to pay for everything, or if you're single. It's 2016, and I am still single. On this day, I usually stay in my room and drink my Pepsi and eat my Hot Lays and watch romantic movies and cry because I'm not in a relationship like Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in "The Time Traveler's Wife." But this year, I'm a new person. And I am taking on a new motto courtesy of the wise Cristina Yang: "You are the sun."
You see, 2015 was a particularly bad year for me. I had a void that needed filling, but ultimately it never got full. I'm a hopeless romantic and I love the idea of love -- of being with someone and holding their hand and thinking about them all day every day. So in 2015, I was hopelessly devoted to a girl in particular but nothing ever came of it and she started dating somebody else. I was basically Tom in "(500) Days of Summer."
I assume that everything will go like it does in my head but that's just not how life works. I want to be like Derek and build a silhouette of Meredith's dream house out of candles; I want the honeymoon-phase sequence from the movies, I want the fights, I want the things they sing about in love songs. But the heart of the matter is that right now is just not the time for me yet. And it took a heartbreak for me to finally see that.
What I need most right now is now is not to be involved with someone else. What I need right now is to enjoy what life has to offer and really live for myself. And if along the way I meet someone, then good. If it doesn't work out, that's fine too. The first person I date isn't always going to be the one. We all don't get to be Lily and Marshall -- meet in college and fall in love with the one. Most people are the Teds: continually dating, hoping to find the one, but knowing deep down inside that the one won't come right away. There's beauty in the struggle. So let's don't lose hope because we haven't dated or because we broke up with "the one." The one will come along when the time is right.
This year, I watched "The Time Traveler's Wife" and hoped that one day I will get the meet-in-a-cute-way, the honeymoon phases, and all the struggles that come with a relationship. But for right now, I don't need anyone else for me to be happy as long as I'm happy with myself. So while everyone else was off at dinner spending the big bucks, I was at home treating myself to cute movies and snacks.
