“You are your best thing.” -Toni Morrison
Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, so there was much abuzz about love, fate and destiny—from engagements to attempts at reconciliation, it is a day usually marked for exaggerated gestures and whimsy. For people who are in love or who have had long-time or long-distanced relationships, the day yields sweet memories if not the promise of a weekday sexcapade. Valentine’s Day for new and renewed love is an opportunity to publicly showcase relationships and gestures by sharing pictures and timelines of glitter-filled Hallmark cards, blood red roses, heart-shaped chocolate candies, white table-clothed meals, and decadent black lingerie and other romantic reminiscences. For people who are not in love, or who find themselves in loveless or unhealthy relationships, Valentine’s Day can be triggering for the ways it amplifies the pseudo-possibility of happily-ever-afters they have not themselves experienced or sustained. For those who are cynical about manufactured holidays, Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to quip about the capitalistic and materialistic focus of unrealistic conceptions of love relationships. For people who value their relationships, particularly femme to femme friendships, Valentine’s Day is morphed into Galentine’s Day, and is an opportunity to celebrate fateful friendships with other “gals” and people with whom you are in platonic love. And then, there are those of us who, like me, are mostly ambivalent. February 14 is, well, February 14.
As I do with most societal expectations and projections as a grown-ass-woman, I reject the notion that my worth is tethered to my relationship status, but admittedly when I was a teenager I longed to be the object of someone’s admiration—I wished for personalized Valentine’s, high school lunchroom serenades, or main office deliveries of styrofoam stuffed bears, balloons and carnation flowers, which in retrospect must have been much cheaper to deliver in the earlier 90s than they are now. There was the time I waited, in vain, for a Valentine’s gift from a boy who claimed to be interested in me, only to be told after the fact that he “doesn’t believe in Valentine’s Day.” Funny, that the year before and for years after he believed in it enough to purchase gifts for other people—just not that year and just not for me. There was also a time when I prepared a homemade meal for a man with whom sex was frequent but casual, and he stood me up, failing to call or even apologize. He was, it seems, determined to not spend Valentine’s Day with me so that I would not read anything into it, because sex, of course, was not the same as love.
For much of my twenties I talked about Valentine’s Day as “Single Awareness Day,” because it is the one day of the year I was made most publicly (and sometimes ashamedly) aware of my singleness in a way that marked it as not just circumstantial but largely unfortunate. Awh, poor thing, coupled people’s eyes would say, nobody loves her. If love is measured in romantic and public gestures then they were right—but I was fiercely loved by and in love with the people in my life who were there every other day, not just February 14.
My love language is words of affirmation, so unsurprisingly I express my adoration and appreciation to people by affirming, loving on, and encouraging them with words. In therapy, I recently realized that I also use my love language to deflect. Ironically, in the same way I receive words of affirmation as love, I am also uncomfortable with/by words of affirmation as love, so I usually seek cover. It may be a result of not being complimented for so long that I got used to not receiving “expressions of love,” or not believing them. It also, though, may be that I unconsciously feel unworthy of it. Any time I am complimented, I attempt to attach the compliment to the complimenter. I distract from any focus or attention on me by reciprocating the gesture to express my love and appreciation, generously camouflaged in flowerly language.
I have written about how self-love is the best love, but I know I need to practice what I preach—which includes positive-self talk, intentional distance from people who have ever lessened my self-esteem, daily rituals of self-care, and the empowerment to establish boundaries I need to feel confident and safe at all times. I need to use my love language more intentionally with myself, so I am spending time in front of mirrors, beginning to journal and dream (again), and giving myself permission to be celebrated and loved—me first.
Here are some of my current self-love affirmations--
1. I love myself. My face. My body. My skin. My (im)perfections.
2. I take care of myself and I prioritize rest.
3. I am healthy and whole. I lack nothing I need.
4. I am dope AF and I have healthy relationships. I am in reciprocal relationship with the loves of my life.
5. I am worthy of love and all good things.
6. I deserve and demand respect.
7. I am self-sufficient and all of my needs are met.
8. I am a keeper of peace. I am at peace at all times.
9. I am unbothered and blessed. I am not responsible for other people’s perceptions of me. The desires of my heart will be made manifest.
10. My life shape-shifts around my dreams.
Apt! Thank you for sharing, Dr. B.