Valentine’s Day, Single Awareness Day, Galentine’s Day -- call it whatever you want, but it’s the holiday that you either love or love to hate. Whether you already have romantic plans with your significant other or are rolling your eyes in disgust about it all, Valentine's Day is the one holiday that stirs up different emotions for people every year. Sometimes you have a valentine to celebrate the day with, while other times you want nothing more than to curl up on the couch with you, yourself, and a bottle of wine. Whatever you decide to do on Valentine’s Day, there is one thing that we all will do on this day, besides celebrating love and eating loads of chocolate. We all will be reflecting on ourselves and how we have grown in love over the years.

Unlike any other holiday, Valentine’s Day is the only one that truly resembles who and where you are in your life from year to year. When you were in elementary school, this holiday was nothing more than just another excuse for you to get out of class and to eat a sickening amount of candy. Everybody got those cheesy Valentine's Day cards and it didn’t matter if you had a special someone or not. But once you got to high school, though, you started to realize that this holiday was no longer as inclusive or as harmless as you had thought. Rather, you started to feel like you stuck out if you didn't have a valentine to make cute plans with or who gave you roses and chocolate. And so, the dread and disdain that are commonly felt towards Valentine's Day start to form at this stage in your life as you begin to navigate through the drama of high school relationships.

But just when you think you have written this holiday off for good, things start to change once again when you head off to college. This time, you begin to realize that it no longer seems like the end of the world if you don’t have that special someone like it did in high school. Even the dread and disdain that you have built up towards this holiday start to slowly chip away. This is because, at this stage in your life, you are starting to become your own person. For the first time, you are realizing that you don’t need anybody to make you feel happy or loved. Rather, the only person who you need is yourself.

And so, even though it still isn't my favorite holiday, I have come to appreciate Valentine’s Day over the years. Even though being reminded of past relationships may still be painful from time to time, I am also reminded of how far I have come from those middle school days. These memories no longer hurt or make me feel as angry or upset as they used to, but rather they make me smile and remember that I have loved and continue to grow in love to this day. So whether you are single or taken, a lover or a hater of this holiday, or simply don’t care about any of it at all, I hope that when Valentine’s Day comes around, you also find yourself reflecting on how far you have come and how much you have grown in love over the years, too.