Unless you have recently landed on the planet, you will know that today is Valentine’s Day. A day that is fairly horrendous if you’re not in a relationship as it is everywhere. Kids make cards at school, it’s in every supermarket, a whole aisle usually dedicated to cards and chocolates and teddy bears, you can’t really avoid it. I am largely ambivalent about it, I am in a relationship obviously but it is not one that needs validation on a certain day. I did get a card, I’ll be honest, and that’s lovely but I would have been absolutely fine if I hadn’t.
Once, a very long time ago, my ex took me to get a takeaway from Chicken Cottage. I can distinctly remember sitting in his car, always his car, in one of those rows of shops found in the middle of housing estates waiting for him to get the food for us to take home. It’s funny, that’s the only Valentine’s that I remember with him and we pissibly had four, maybe five together.
It goes without saying that he wasn’t romantic.
It was Valentine’s Day two weeks before I met J. I was the manager of a well known lingerie shop (UK readers can guess which one!) and it was awful. Single and going on fairly awful blind dates, organised on a dating app, never going anywhere, sometimes from my point of view, sometimes theirs. Customer after customer came in, spending an absolute fortune on gifts and underwear, talking about their relationships, about love, even my staff were telling me about their plans. I wish that I’d known that J was just a few days away, I’d like to tell that sad girl that better things were coming.
The Valentine’s before the girls were born in 2014, we were saving money and J cut out hundreds of pink paper hearts. He distributed them up the stairs to our flat then, down the hall and into the living room, leading to a huge homemade card. It is hands down the most romantic thing that anyone has ever done for me, before or since.
Now, in a busy life, I get J something from his girls. And a car. We’ll have a pizza tonight and maybe watch a film. In a week and a half, we are going to London for our anniversary and for a last break before the baby is born. Romance is definitely not dead, but it is just comes in different forms these days. It comes in buying a bag of sweets that you’ll know he’ll like when you go to the shops, it comes in snuggling with your babies watching Paw Patrol while you beam above their heads, it comes in absolutely prioritising your relationship over all others. It comes in your total belief in one another. It comes in planning your lives together.
I love him so very much. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Fairy Lights and Fear 