you get a valentine, and you. and you.
I’ve decided to send all my friends Valentines this year. Not just my single friends, but all my friends, and here’s why:
I’m at that point in my life where basically everyone I know is married or is getting married. This year, I have three weddings, which doesn’t seem like that bad but when you take into account the six weddings I had last year (three of which fell on the exact same day—I wish I was kidding) it starts to get a little overwhelming.
After the wedding comes the Holiday card. It’s like they finally have your address and feel the need to use it at every chance they get. I’ve never really been a big fan of holiday cards (my mom used to make my sister and I blow dry our hair in preparation for ours), but now with each and every postcard—a perfect wedding portrait on one side, a holidayism like “Peace. Love. Joy. Much love from the Millers” on the other—it seems like an excuse for my friends to declare to everyone, “Look at how beautiful and happy we are.”
I know you must be thinking—this girl is bitter and single. While I may be described as bitter at times, I am in fact not single. I’ve been in a committed relationship for six years and I’m confident we will get married in the next few years. So I’m not insecure when it comes to couples, or marriage, or what have you, I just, to quote Cher Horowitz, “get an overwhelming sense of ickyness” by the Holiday card thing.
To be frank, I find it a little discriminatory. It’s like, once you get married, you can have a holiday card. But what about my single friends? Don’t they deserve to be seen looking their very best, next to their best friend, even if that best friend is a Portuguese water dog? Instead, they have to plaster all of their married friends on their fridge, and are forced to be reminded of their singledom every day through New Years when it finally becomes appropriate to chuck them all.
So for that reason, I’m sending out Valentine’s Day cards this year. I hope I can make all my friends, both single and attached, feel special, loved and not at all alienated. Because each and every year without fail, you will receive a Holiday card from a happily married couple, but unfortunately, the same cannot be said of a heartfelt, handwritten Valentine’s Day card from a good friend.
