As Valentine's Day steadily approaches, love is in the air, and in the stores, and everywhere you look. Despite the fact that I've been single for 18 out of 20 of the Valentine's Days I've lived through, and that I'll be spending this Tuesday behind a cash register ringing up people's Valentine's Day meals and watching them playfully argue over who's paying, I've never hated the holiday. Can you believe that?
With the thousands of people who post pictures of their middle fingers up to the Valentine's Day section of stores, or the people who debunk the day because "you should show your significant other love every day of the year," I've never been one of them.
However, every year I find myself pondering the same topic.
Love.
I don't know if I've ever been in love. But I know that I've loved. In thinking about love, I don't question its existence because I know that I feel it. I know that I love my mother, and my father, my friends and my colleagues, the stranger I saw on the bus that one time and the guy in my freshman media class that told me that I forgot my umbrella in class. I know that love exists because every time I step outside my house I find something new to love. Every time I look up at the sky my heart swells and I know this feeling can't be anything more than love for the earth I was put on. I know love exists because when I see someone being treated unjustly my heart breaks; I know that they are human and don't deserve anything less than anyone else. I know love exists because if it didn't I wouldn't love as hard as I do.
I know that love exists because I give it every day. Yet somehow, it still feels so elusive.
Though my heart is full of love, I've always thought of receiving it as something untouchable. I think of someone caring, someone being there, someone wanting to be there as something impossible for me to feel. I dream of romantic love and platonic love and everything in between. But I can't reach it.
So this Valentine's Day, as love is all around me and inside me, I'll patiently be waiting to be able to touch it. And that's okay.
Because when it comes, it's going to feel ten times as good.
