Besides for the obvious things (watching couples make out very animatedly in public, not being able to get a decent pizza because everyone's ordering out, realizing that the only thing you get on Valentine's day is candy from your nice professors, and a card from your mom with maybe $10 in it if you're lucky) Valentine's Day is a really weird and disturbing holiday.

When I was a plaid skirt-wearing middle schooler with bad acne and a peach fuzz mustache, I was incredibly anxious whenever Valentine's Day came around. I knew my crush would never give me one of his 32-count NBA valentines, which he passed out to the class every year. Little did I know the most disturbing part of the whole day would be learning why we celebrate Valentine's Day in the first place.

Since I went to a Catholic school, we had to talk about St. Valentine. The librarian pulled out her "365 Days of Saints" book and read from the page dated for the occasion. Apparently St. Valentine wasn't just one person. Most martyrs were called Valentines. I was naturally horrified that everyone was gorging themselves with pink-frosted cupcakes and passing notes to their crushes when we were celebrating a holiday in the name of unidentified early Christians who were torched at the stake and fed to hungry lions. I spent the rest of the day trying to forget that information, and I hid my excitement upon getting a Lebron James valentine, because I just felt too guilty (Thanks Catholic guilt).

I later discovered that Valentine's Day didn't become a romantic thing until the 14th century. Leave it to those middle-aged wackos to eroticize brutal deaths. That's some messed up stuff. Anyway, for those who find Valentine's horrifying because it remains a huge capitalist event in Western society that celebrates heterosexual relationships and excludes people who are single, just remember that it is actually so much worse because of its morbid past. Don't worry though, all chocolate is 50% off the next day.