valentine's day

how did valentine's day go from being a mostly enjoyable holiday as a kid -- (sure, there was the occasional embarassment or heartache when your grade-school crush didn't reciprocate the number of candy hearts stuffed into the cheap paper envelope enclosing the cartoon valentine you'd earnestly picked out at K-Mart with your mom) where spent half a day decorating a shoebox into which fellow classmates stuffed their simple yet meaningful valentines; when you cut and pasted laboriously to construct some semblance of a heart for your mom or dad; when getting a valentine's day card in the mail from your grandma was cause for excitement -- to bitter, jaded, and downright depressing as a young adult, where the pressure to be dating someone, to have someone with which to spend this stupid holiday, is unbearable? especially when you spent valentine's day last year with someone but this year find yourself sorrowfully single and alone.

at least it was cold and raining and a monday. took away some of the magic, made it more OK to not be doing anything tonight.