Is one the loneliest number?

 
    Oh Valentine’s Day. A day of adoring your significant other with flowers, chocolates and hallmark cards.  A day to proclaim, reassess and celebrate your love for that special person, showering them with hugs and kisses and whisper sweet-nothings to their ears. Yup, the certain cheesiness is highlighted this time of year and you can either hate it or love it.
    If you hate it, then the concept of Valentine’s Day as Single Awareness Day also known as S.A.D., must not be new to you. It is a day when many around the world (yes, the world!) commiserate singledom.
    Single. Uno. One.
    Paul McCartney even went so far as to sing a song about this number. And he said it was lonely.
    But ironically, ‘alone’ is a relative term. There are more singletons out there than you think. They’re just not walking around campus with goofy smiles.
    Well, you could have that goofy smile too. I must say I have a particularly fond memory of what was going to be another single Valentine’s Day not so long ago. I gathered all my single friends and we ate at Peaches Barbecue (a huge group, mind you of boys and gals), and completely depleted them of food.
    Another year, a bunch of us girls dressed up to have dinner at Little Tokyo, which actually turned out to be date land in Milledgeville. We were each other’s date.
    Go ahead, you can say  it sounds lame, but I think there’s a comfort in knowing your friends are “suffering” with you, and besides its hard to poke fun at cheesy couples by yourself or in your bedroom wallowing all alone.
    I’m not gonna lie, but there were moments when there was a little pang and a little bite when I would look over at the next table and see a guy give a girl flowers. And plus, they were holding hands and coyly smiling at each other, and she was probably batting her eye lashes too, but I digress. It was the sweetest thing ever. Annoyingly sweet, but sweet none-the-less. It does feel wonderful to appreciated. And it feels amazing to have someone care for you perhaps more than you do.
    But a significant other isn’t the only one who can assure you that you are loved. My friends got me through every single time and prevented any one of us from wallowing (too  much) or ingesting more than the recommended pints of Ben & Jerry’s.
    You can either take singledom as that “lonely” number or you can rock it and think “hell ya” you don’t have to spend tons of money on this highly commercialized holiday. Throw a party. Do something nice for yourself. Spend it with fellow singletons and stop wasting energy being miserable and scowling at those celebrating with a significant other.
    There are 100 million single people out there. Now, I don’t know about you but that seems like a pretty big number.
    So go be single. Enjoy it and mingle.     

    Ana Maria is not in fact single this Valentine’s Day (hooray!) but she has had a few years of celebrating Single Awareness Day under her belt and can still recall those celebrations pretty clearly. She is not a relationship expert, or any expert for that matter, but she does however on occasion, enjoy leaving the features desk and write about her musings for a change.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 15 2008. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry