Valentine’s Day. It’s Just a Day, folks. But if you’re single you can need reminding of that, and I do. It’s never been my day. I think I’ve had two good Valentine’s Days in my entire life (one of which turned immediately bad the next day) and many a year I’ve spent Vday at the most depressing war-torn movie I can find (Hotel Rwanda and The Battle of Algiers come to mind), so as to lift my spirits at my good fortune of being born in a country that is neither war torn nor on the verge of a horrendous massacre. Somehow it’s appropriate this year that it’s on a Monday!

I don’t know many people who are not somehow irked by Valentine’s Day at some point in their lives. It brings with it high expectations. First off, if you’re single you’re not even part of the club. It’s not even like the Puerto Rican, Irish, or the Gay Pride parade where even if you’re not qualified to actually be in the parade, you can cheer along the sideline! If you’re single, or don’t have a date, it’s like you’ve been banished from the party! Then if you’ve just started dating, it’s usually a nightmare if you do or don’t celebrate it. Either way you most likely will be damned. Too high expectations for any new couple to live up to, and focusing on all the inadequacies in a long-term relationship, it puts pressure on a relationship to be everything a relationship should be all at once in one 24 hours a day. But what about the rest of the year? I say we banish it, but jewelry and floral lobbyists would stop the bill!

Speaking of love, or lack thereof, I’d like to put something out there. A lot of women decry how much attention thin and beautiful women get, in the media and elsewhere. But I can tell you as a, if not a beautiful, but thin and blonde woman, I get enough initial attention from guys, but it’s the lasting kind of attention that I find lacking. You cannot imagine how disappointing it is to experience perpetual initial excitement from guys only to find that once they start to get to know the real you their enthusiasm falls flat like a souffle when the oven has been opened too soon!

I have had many outrageous things that have been said to me in my dating life. One of the more subtle outrageous things was with a guy whom I very much liked because of his intelligence and wit. And it was because of his intelligence that I thought his initial red hot enthusiasm for me (even on one of my good Vdays!) was because he was looking inside to who I really was as a person. However, when we started to get to know one another further, his enthusiasm cooled. In our discussions about why (which he never really explained–such is life!) he said he “loved the way I looked” not realizing that what he was implying was that he disliked, or at least didn’t love, what was underneath my thin blonde exterior.

Maybe I was too brainy? Too creative? Too poor? Too unorganized? Not born and bred in the right county? His mother would hate me? Too this? Too that? Who knows!!! The point is, people have romantic relationships so that you can share your “inner” self with someone, not your “outer” self! And it’s tres disappointing when people confuse the two or worse, think they’re the same!

That’s why I love the show “True Blood.” Because it’s not about vampires, or true blood, but about true love. Everyone’s fighting exterior prejudices, and in their fights there is a lot of talk about how you should be proud of who you are on the inside, no matter what you look like on the outside. I like that the main character Sookie, is a thin blonde woman who in fact is just plain strange on the inside because she’s actually a telepath and can hear people’s thoughts! While you would think her outer appearance would give her great success with her “human” kind, it’s her inner self that is so different from her exterior that makes it so that she ends up finding true love with a vampire.

While I have yet to find a guy who really likes the me underneath the surface long enough to stick around for the time it takes to fully bake the souffle of true love, I do hope there is someone out there and that I will find him, or that he will somehow find me!