Ask Kate

Dear Kate,

Why is Valentines Day so darn important? It is just another holiday for girls to get all up in a tussy. Shouldn't your special someone make you feel special everyday, and not some stupid day that is expressed with hearts and flowers and other such cliches?

I love you,

Boy Hater

Dear BH,

Valentines is only important to two groups of people: small children and new couples cast under the spell of infatuation. And let's be real, the kids just want all the free candy and the new couples just want an excuse to test each other. We womenfolk want to see if our "Mr. Sensitive" can pull off a major relationship test. If we have any sense about us, we won't crave the candy clichés or skanky chocolate panties. Instead, we're looking for something real, a poem or an attempt at cooking. And the men, they are testing us too. They want to see what kind of girl we're going to turn out to be. Are we the crying type who wants the sappy cupid card? Or are we the spontaneous dumpster diving for leftover Valentines Day chocolate type?

Regardless, if you don't fall into these two categories, Valentines Day seems a bit ridiculous. No, a lot ridiculous. A marketing scheme. A grand attempt at making all of us who are exceedingly single feel exceptionally dreadful. You signed your letter "Boy Hater." This can only mean one thing, you got burned. And haven't we all? Men and women alike. I have to admit, I'm tired of hearing about love myself and getting sucked into the madness created by Sleepless in Seattle junkies and Cinderella sluts. It's not real, and most of us know it deep down. Yet we fight our whole lives to prove how real it is. It's a coping mechanism for the reality that no one really cares about us.

The poetry I write is a great example. It screams of abandonment and pain, because really, that's what love is. It isn't the kisses or gentle touches, it's the feelings afterwards. When the lights are out and they haven't called for three days and you simply want to stop breathing. I knew someone once. Love, she said, should be spoken slowly. For honesty is slower, and that is the trouble with it all. We feel love creep up our spines and slide off our tongues before we can create a plausible reason why we can't follow through. Good intentions matter less than bad ones, it is all the same. Whether we mean to or not, we break and are broken under the burdens of love. We fall indefinitely to someone who cannot, or simply will not, love back in the same way we do. Misery undeniably follows, though it is unlike anything before. It is a sharper pain, making it difficult to sleep and a nuisance to breathe. It turns you upside down on the bed, with your eyes opened towards the door.

Running seems logical, though impossible without any air. So we sit and wait for heartache to slowly transform into indifference, and for many it will. But for the few of us who are truly in love, this condition will never completely disappear. It will forever be a part of how we live in a world that has quietly shortchanged us. Though many will claim to be fully in love, most only brush over it in moments of passion or affection, using noisy theatrics to prove their truth. But we are much quieter, much deeper into what they believe they have attained.

So you're right B.H, Valentines Day has made a mockery of love. Love isn't flowers or candy or cliches, it is being stupid together. It is watching your best friend in the entire world hurt you more than you've ever been hurt before and then not killing them in their sleep. So embrace the other 364 days in the year and live up February 14th with your girlfriends and a gallon of ice cream.

Best,

Kathrine Joy