The Frozen Lake

It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m walking around it like a thin spot on a frozen lake.

Last year I celebrated it with my partner of nearly seven years, just eight months after our wedding. We went out for a lovely dinner (I think), then came home to our lovely house and our lovely animals, and probably thought about the state of extreme loveliness in which we lived.

This year I live alone in an apartment. Three of my lovely animals are still with me but the others are at the lovely house I no longer occupy, with the partner I’m no longer with. We’re still married, but only on paper. Last week she left a box at the front door of my building, then sent me a colourless text message announcing same. The box, astonishingly heavy, contained baking supplies – yeah, you heard me - that had apparently been expunged from the pantry of the house after finally being discovered in all their heartbreaking dreadfulness. I used to bake for us a lot.

There was also an envelope in the box, full of cards and letters I’d given her over our years together. I know the intended message: “See? This is what used to be true and what you’ve now utterly fucked up. I hope it hurts.” It’s a message that’s been communicated to me in every possible medium for months, and most days I willingly accept the butcher’s blade of guilt and cut my own heart out with it. But still I want to ask, “Do you think I don’t know? Do you think I don’t think of this stuff all the time? Do you think I don’t have a drawer of my filing cabinet dedicated to things like this I can’t look at anymore but can’t bear to throw away? Do you think it doesn’t hurt already?”

Fuck, man.

Anyway, that’s what led up to Valentine’s Day. Or one of the things. There was more, but talking about it gets boring after a while and I start to hate the sound of my own voice, even in writing. So the very last thing I want to think about is true love, forever love, the stuff I promised but didn’t deliver, and today’s the day it’s bloody everywhere. Yeah, Hallmark has turned Valentine’s Day into an ugly commercial event but at the heart of it (pun intended), anyone IN love loves the excuse to celebrate it. I used to. Roses are cliché but they’re also gorgeous and only an idiot would resent getting them. Chocolate…do I really need to justify that? Even if all you got for V-Day was a card and a kiss, you’ve got love, baby. Take good care of it, for me.