This is a Promise with a Catch

I like to make fun of Valentine’s day by imagining it as this miserable holiday devoted to changing into my pajamas early and cuddling up to a nice cold bottle of liquor with Some Kind of Wonderful on the tube. In theory, Keith (Eric Stoltz) would have been my perfect guy because, you know, painting. Duh, that’s like, so deep. In practice, I know it would never work. I would probably have castrated Keith, fucked Amanda, and married Watts.

The same goes for Valentine’s, as laughable as the movie marathon with myself and an ice-cold bottle of Lite sounded, in practice it would have probably been a lot better than how I actually spent Valentine’s, which was on another meaningless marathon of “What?” Holidays like this weren’t invented with people like me in mind. For the past decade, the only person who’d get me flowers on Valentine’s day has been my dad. I’ve had boyfriends, but they always assume I like other things. I’m not complaining, but as small a gesture as a houseplant is, it can come pretty loaded with meaning. It’s more of a badge than a gift, like how you bite the bullet and get the fucking ring even if you’ve never seen your woman in jewelry. As much as I like comics and food and other stupid shit, I would want in on the flower club at least once a year.

Then again, I don’t have a boyfriend so I can’t really speak for this year. I’m just saying maybe I should have just stayed in and watched Some Kind of Wonderful instead of running myself through another trite way to avoid time alone. I need time alone, the moment has come to admit it and mean it.

All in all though, it was a good weekend. Friday night at the prom made me realize it’s really not that huge a leap from 24 to 30. At 30, it’s a perfectly viable (although not entirely appealing) idea that I could be doing the exact same thing with the exact same people. Then I think about people like my mom who had children at my age, and I wonder about how differently it could have turned out. My mom was 29 when she had me, before that she had my older brother and sister. I meet the thought of having a kid–even one kid–at my age with a mix of horror and helplessness. I have no idea, I know it’s supposed to be instinctive, but I use terror tactics to get my little brother to do his homework. I seriously cannot fathom the idea of my life at 24 including a kid and a husband (or at least a doting and committed partner).