Stephanie Gayle

Dear Valentine's Day,

Please go away. Please? Look, I enjoyed you once, long ago. When I was in elementary school and celebrating you involved cutting out construction paper hearts and adding glitter. It was nice to stuff cards into the little envelopes set up in front of everyone's school desk, fun to see what creative interpretation everyone put on you. (Though I have no doubt, this involving elementary school children, that insults were exchanged and tears shed out of class). But since those days, I admit, my attitude toward you has changed. I don't like you.

I curse when my email inbox is filled with last minute exhortations to buy roses or chocolates or anything for my sweetie (you assume I have one and that he wants such things). I have a strong desire to sweep my arm through the oh-so-red-and-white display at my local drugstore, knocking items onto the floor, spilling forth candies from your gaudy beribboned hearts for the single, engaged, and married alike to consume.

They've managed to attach chocolate to you as a lure, but you know what? The genius fuckwits of holiday marketing have decided to begin deploying Easter candy insanely early this year, so I can turn a blind eye to your rather red-light charms and select a bag of mini-Cadbury eggs. You know I always prefer bunnies to armed, naked cherubs.

I'm tired of your gender-specific assumptions that women demand jewelry or roses as tokens of love on a day chosen by advertisers to push more of this merchandise. You know what? I'm not a big fan of roses (not the red ones, especially). And you can keep your frickin' tennis bracelet. What I want is your absence. Go away, Valentine's Day. Go away. And take those creepy naked babies with the crossbows with you.

Goodbye,
Stephanie