Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: Valentine’s Day

Love in all its various forms

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Today is Valentine’s Day. I used to hate this day, even when I was in a relationship. It’s a manufactured holiday and one that has morphed into (in the het-norm) ‘Buy an expensive gift for your ladyfriend, otherwise you don’t love her’. There are just too mayn expectations for it to ever hold up.

Side note: That’s my issues with traditions more generally. They just cannot live up to the expectations. Weddings, for example. So many people put in so much time, money, and effort into planning their perfect wedding and then it never goes how they want it to go. Also, so many people say they don’t remmeber anything from their wedding. It always puzzled me because it’s just one day whereas a marriage, presumably, will be for the rest of one’s life. (In theory, anyway.)

Side note to the side note: I read an article many moons ago about how everyone these days is entitled to a starter marriage, as it were. Meaning one marriage that ended in divorce. They made a convincing case for it, including the fact that people live so much longer these days. (Which, not exactly true, but let’s go with it.)

To which I say, “Why restrict yourself to one person?” I am someone who does better when I am not in a monogamous relationship. I think it’s because I don’t feel pressured to be the one and only (read, doing all the emotional support). I get way too focused on the other person in a monogamous relationship.

Anyway. back to Valentine’s Day. When I was working at the county, my boss came in on V-Day in a terrible mood. She showed me a new leather briefcase she had, and it was really nice. Soft, supple, and obviously top quality. It turned out that her husband had given it to her for V-Day. I thought it was a lovely present! Her old briefcase had been in tatters.

She was furious because she wanted a tennis bracelet. She had left out magazines opened to tennis bracelet advertisements around the house, hoping he would get the hint.

I didn’t say this to her (because she was my boss), but I thought she was being ridiculous. First of all, she was a grown woman who could buy her own tennis bracelet. Secondly, if that’s what she really wanted from him, she should have just told him. Yes, I know it’s not as romantic, but depending on him to take in context clues was risky on her part. Thirdly, his actual gift was thoughtful. He had noticed that her old briefcase was falling apart and got her a really nice new one.

I get that some people don’t want something practical, so I can’t totally blame her for that. But again, if she really wanted the tennis bracelet, she should have simply told him.


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Taking the romantic plunge

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Love stinks. At least, that was my motto until roughly a year ago. On and off. When I was a teenager before I got my first date, I desperately wanted it. It was the only thing on my mind and I cringed at how desperate I was. Unrequited crushes that never hid and other assorted embarrassments–I was just the worst. I had a crush on the same boy from first grade until sixth grade and only stopped because we went from elementary school to middle school, which had many more kids. I couldn’t keep tabs on him like I could in elementary school.

I was a freak from the start. A second-generation immigrant kid from a weird Asian country well before being Asian was exotic and cool. I was fat, awkward, and way too smart for my own good. I got picked on by the American kids for being too foreign. I got scolded by the Taiwanese moms for being too boyish. My home life was shitty and I lost myself in books because I hated the real world so much.

I got my first boyfriend when I was sixteen. Seventeen? Summer before 11th grade so sixteen. He was smart and cute and very kind-hearted. We went to different schools so only saw each other on the weekends. We dated for two years and while we both wanted to wait to have sex, we did almost everything but PIV in those two years. I enjoyed it at first, but it got to the point where it was all we did every time we went out (in his SUV, which, you know, romantic), which started to make me uncomfortable. I couldn’t find the words to tell him, however, and went along with his plans to go to California for college. He was going to Stanford and I had applied to UC…want to say Santa Cruz? Whichever is closest to Stanford. He said that if I didn’t go with him, we had to break up.

I had my eye on someone at work (mall. Different stores), anyway, so I broke up with him. I called St. Olaf to see if they still had a spot, they said I had half an hour to decide, so I did. That’s how I ended up going to St. Olaf, which was–an interesting place to go to college. That is not the point of this post, however, so I’m just going to walk on by that.

I had a serious relationship while I was at St. Olaf that seriously messed with my brain. Let’s face it, I had issues beforehand, but it didn’t help to have someone who didn’t know what he wanted himself. Or rather, it would have been more honest of him to say that he wanted sex and a companion, but not a monogamous romantic relationship. In fact, he asked me out after omitting the fact that he was in a romantic relationship that he demanded open up when his girlfriend went abroad for a semester. He wanted his cake and to eat it, too, and he seriously messed me up in the meantime.

I want to stress that I was in no shape to be in a relationship in the first place. I was looking for all the wrong things and for all the wrong reasons. I wanted someone to complete me and fill the hole that was inside me (innuendo semi-intended).Don’t get me wrong. I loved him with all my heart, but it was not a good kind of love. I was too clingy and too needy, and I didn’t know how NOT to be that.


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An Ode/Eulogy to Valentine’s Day

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Ed. Note: I wrote this on Valentine’s Day, even though it won’t be posted until the day after. Just so there’s no confusion.

I have a complicated relationship with Valentine’s Day. I have always professed to hate it, and I do, mostly, but it’s for more complex reasons than I normally admit. I would tell people when asked (and sometimes unprompted) that I deplored the commercial aspects and being told that I have to buy lavish gifts to demonstrate my love. I firmly believed that you could show your love in many different ways at any time of the year, and I didn’t need Hallmark to dictate when I should display my love, damn it. That was all true and sincerely felt, but there was a deeper, darker reason I hated it so much–it’s because it consistently let me down. Yes, even I, as jaded and bitter as I was, I had bought into the promises and dreams Valentine’s day had fed to me, lies, really, during my teenage years and into my twenties. I wanted the romance, to be wined and dined, and to be made to feel like a queen. I wanted happily-ever-after that was the bailiwick of fairy tales and Harlequin Romance novels. When I was in a relationship during those years, even though I would pooh-pooh Valentine’s Day, I would secretly hope that my partner would surprise me with a magical night. It never happened, and each time it didn’t, I became increasingly bitter. Even though I tried to pretend I was fine with having a low-key Valentine’s Day, I wasn’t. In other words, I was a lover scorned being spiteful towards my ex-lover.

During my thirties, I tried to make my peace with Valentine’s Day, even though I dreaded its arrival every year. I was not in a relationship more often than I was, and each Valentine’s Day was a stark reminder that I was single. Our society is very couple-centric, and it’s not like I need another day to shove my alone-ness in my face. I get enough of that wherever I go–you really can’t escape it anywhere. Back in my thirties, I desperately wanted to be in a relationship, although I would have vigorously denied it. I was an independent, strong woman, damn it, and I didn’t need no man or woman to make me complete. Yet, there was something inside me that longed to be one half of a couple. I couldn’t squash the feeling, no matter how hard I tried. So, much of my bluster about Valentine’s Day was because it made me feel my lack of a romantic relationship keenly, and I hated feeling that way.

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