Love is all around us...and it f***ing sucks!

Caution: Relatively profane post. You have been warned.

So much for this being my Best Year Ever. It's done nothing but suck since the stroke of midnight on January 1st. Seriously, what is wrong with people? What is wrong with me?

Next month is February. February means Valentine's Day. Fuck that shit. Every year I put together the "Single Girls' Night Out" on V-Day where I get a bunch of single girl friends together and we go out and do something fun. One year it was dinner, drinks, and karaoke. One year it was just dinner. Last year it was improv comedy. I will be doing it again this year, for its fourth annual occasion. And while thinking about what to do this year, I started feeling a little pissy. Why is it that FOUR YEARS in a row now I've had to do this? And even before the Single Girls' Night Out inception, Valentine's Day held very little water. The year before I started doing it I was involved in a shaky long-distance thing. The year before that I was single. The year before that I was single. And the year before that...I was single. In fact I haven't had an actual Valentine since 2001 (Hi Tim, I know you're reading this - see? I remembered). So, with the exception of one lousy/questionable year in 2004 when I didn't even get a phone call so I'm not even sure whether to count it or not, it's been SEVEN years since I've had anyone "special" to celebrate Valentine's Day with.

Okay, say what you want about the commercialization and Hallmarked bastardization of the holiday, but you have to remember that I am a romantic. And a hopeless one at that. I cry at weddings of people I don't even know. I cry at sappy movies. I cry at church. I cry at fucking theatre curtain calls, fercripessake. I'm very easily emotionally overwhelmed, and I'm a little fragile at times.

It's getting harder and harder, though, to not be bitter and barmy, full of venom and bile as I walk through the stores and am bombarded with stupid red and pink lacy displays, and the word "love" thrown into my path in 4-foot high letters. It's getting more and more pitiful each time I throw down ten bucks for another bouquet of Gerberas for myself. Every movie I watch with just my cats for company brings me down a little more. With every card I think of buying my mom, I feel more and more the loser I have become.

I KNOW that I have to stop looking for it. I KNOW that I have to leave it up to fate and stop manipulating situations in my favor only to be crushed when they don't work out. But, shit...how much of this crap do I have to wade through before I find that gem, that ONE good person who's in the same place as I am? I hadn't been actively looking until recently, and then I finally had my life in a place where I was ready to share it with someone, and it's just not happening.

*sigh*

I used to really like being single. Now...not so much. This sucks. And I wish every store in the world would burn down between now and Valentine's Day. St. Pat's Day never looked so good.