PSA: I Hate Valentine’s Day (But It’s Not For THe REason You Think)

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Happy Valentine’s Day you glorious bastards!

That’s not really a me thing to say, but I just wanted to see how it felt (insert proud, awkward smile here). It felt good. I won’t make it a habit, but yes, you are glorious! And on some days probably a bastard but that’s okay. We all have those days!

However, I digress before I have even begun.

I hate this day and let me tell you why.

Once upon a time, there was a little Marissa who dreamed of her prince charming. Doing all the fun things together, like swinging and holding hands. Or skipping through a field of grass. This little Marissa had so much hope for the love of her life she held on to it for dear life. If it was in doll form, it would probably be suffocated that’s how tight of a grip she held.

Yet, we fast forward and at thirty years old, she finds herself still single and loathing the traditional hallmark holiday. Like it’s an extra special reminder that she is still very single, hustling through life, without the warmth of a partner to bring her flowers and say the words ‘I love you’.

Isn’t that sad?

I’m going to be blunt and honest here: It kind of fucking sucks.

In the span of my life, I have had a Valentine a handful of times. The most prominent and memorable one was after I started dating my first boyfriend. I was nineteen years old and I was in my second semester of Sophomore year. I went over to his apartment and on his bed were these beautiful flowers and chocolates. Something I had never had before. I had told him we didn’t have to celebrate and it wasn’t a big deal, but we did. We went out to dinner and he made me feel so incredibly special. It was my first real Valentine’s. It was an explosion of feeling and one I looked forward to every year.

I never asked myself why I pretended like it didn’t matter, though. I never took a step back and reflected on the thoughts that I had adopted to write off this consumerist holiday. This holiday that signifies you’re either loved or you are not. You have someone or you don’t. I never took the time to figure it out.

Over the last few weeks, my defeat in the dating game has felt imminent. Like maybe I am just destined to be single for the rest of my life. That no matter how hard I try, not to make a connection but just to be real with someone that will lead to more, the hopeful romantic in me has started to die and the cynic has started to move back in.

However, none of this is why I hate this Holiday. The reason I hate this holiday is because I want so desperately to celebrate it. I don’t know if anyone else who is single or has ever been single on this holiday has felt this, but for me, it feels like pretending to hate the holiday is easier than accepting that I wish I wasn’t alone for it.

There is an insurmountable pile of shame that lays on my shoulders if I admit that I kind of love the idea of Valentine’s Day. Not because of the gifts and not because the ‘I love you’s’ somehow means more on this day than any other. No, going out to celebrate any time of the year with someone you love is amazing. But something about being able to share in that with the rest of the world at the same time is kind of beautiful.

I won’t call it FOMO, because it’s not. It’s not a fear of missing out when it’s just a blunt honest reality. It exists and I can’t change my relationship status without a partner by my side.

Romantic love is incredible. It’s strong and sometimes fiery. It’s passionate and it’s dull. It’s monotonous and it’s adventure. It’s shared experiences and extreme heartbreak. It’s every feeling and emotion we as humans are blessed to get to experience and hold. Some deep instinctual part of us knows that and longs for it – most of us anyway.

I long for it.

The amount of times I have given up and let go of searching for a partner is twenty-nine to be exact. Twenty-nine men I have dated and gone out with. Twenty-nine men I have shared some moment of life with whether for a few hours or for years. Twenty-nine men I have hoped would lead to something more. Twenty-nine men whose dates and names I could recount for you except for two of them. How do I know? Because the other day when I was sulking about this upcoming holiday, I made a list. (We will dive deeper into all this at a later date.)

Is it pathetic? Maybe. Is it helpful? Not really. Did it make me feel better in the moment? Oh, absolutely not. It actually made me feel worse. Part of me was screaming twenty-nine disappointments and the other part was yelling twenty-nine lessons.

And I wish it was just this holiday that got to me like this, but it isn’t. It’s also New Year’s and Christmas and my birthday and the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving and everything in between. Every holiday I spend alone and watch my friends and family around me sharing it with their partners brings me so much joy for them and so much sadness for myself.

So, I don’t know if you can relate. I don’t know if you have ever felt the feeling of being so helplessly alone that despite the effort and the desire to share life with another person but it just seems so far out of reach, it hurts. It aches. It’s like a quiet throbbing between the heart and head that Tylenol and Advil aren’t strong enough to cure.

I don’t hate Valentine’s Day. I actually really love what it represents whether it is a Hallmark Holiday or not. I am so blessed with all the love in my life: my friends, my family, my cats, my co-workers. I am incredibly grateful.

But if I’m honest, I hate this holiday because I don’t have that one person to share it with. That will embrace it with me simply because life is worth celebrating in any capacity. And even when I feel my hope dying, I will continue to pump it back to life because this is something I want.

If you are alone this holiday or in a relationship where you feel alone regardless of the physical person you are sharing life with, and feeling the effects of being single yet again, I want you to know that while I can’t take the feelings away, I feel them with you.

If you are a friend in a relationship, let your single friends know how much you love them on this capitalized romantic holiday, and do it before they say something first. Let them know how much they matter because I guarantee that no matter how secure they are and how independent, a small part needs to be reminded that they are still loved and thought about by someone else.

And if you’re still in need, you can be my Valentine.

Happy Valentine’s Day you Glorious Bastards.

I love you!

Love Always,

Riss

Confidence: How Do You Hold It, Lose It, and Re-Build It?

Photo by Miguel Bruna

A quiet girl is seated on the backside of her bed, leaning against pillows, staring out into the nothingness of her room. The space she holds is minimal. She is absorbed in what ifs and whys. She often finds herself moving through life alone as if standing in the middle of a road while life zooms past. High school is no different. She keeps to the back of the class when she can, just like she keeps to the back of her bed. She finds safety and security in being able to see everything and everyone in front of her so that she doesn’t miss something.

This girl is afraid to be herself. She has reduced herself to a speck on the social scale and would rather hide than step forward and take up space. She would rather barely exist.  

This girl was me.

She wasn’t always me, but she was me from twelve to about nineteen. Even now, when I find myself engaging with people from that era of my life, I fall back into those quiet patterns of being obsolete and small.

This version of me was afraid to be herself. She was afraid to speak her mind and too afraid of what others would think. This version of me held no confidence.

I was engaged in a conversation with some coworkers about doing activities alone and my brain started piecing together how I got so good at being on my own. I am rather impeccable at doing things by myself. I take myself to the movies, the beach, comedy clubs, bars, coffee shops, restaurants, different gyms, and the list goes on. This skill was learned. It did not come naturally to me. It was like my pre-programmed confidence wiring had short-circuited and I was still waiting for the technician to come fix it.

If we run it back a bit, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I started to explore the idea of doing things on my own. One day I took the chance. I stepped outside my comfort zone and edged my way into the confidence zone.

Beyond my personal experience, I started to ask myself a few questions. Where does confidence come from? Why does it sometimes slip away? And how do we keep it?

Where does confidence come from?

Have you ever stopped to think about it? Did it develop over time or have you always just had “it”? That feeling of overwhelming courage to do what you want to do or have thought about doing without a second thought to follow. You were just certain it was right and certain that it wasn’t going to be a mistake.

There is a debate in the world of psychology about the origin of confidence and how it comes to be. Initially, it was thought to be a subjective feeling built by beliefs about the world stemming from experiences and the beliefs of those we grow up around. The only way to access this sense of confidence is through introspection – taking the time to reflect on your own beliefs. If you believe something to be true you are more likely to act in accordance with it (Ott, Masset, and Kepecs 2018).

The most common example used is driving. You come to a T in the road on your way home, a road you have driven so many times before. You know if you go right you will get there and if you go left you will not. Imagine sitting in the car with a friend and they tell you how to get to your house. They say go left. Your thought response might be instant. Absolutely not. You’ve been driving this road your whole life. It’s never been left and that wouldn’t change now. You are confident in your answer and choose the direction you have proven to be right over and over again.

This is statistical quantity. This is the likelihood that a belief is correct based on the constant reinforcement of being correct every time the same decision is made (Ott, Masset, and Kepecs 2018).

Now imagine they are doing construction work on that street and you have to take a detour. To get home you have always gone right, but now you have to go left. You’re less certain of the directions after that since it is not a route you have been taking your whole life. You know the roads to some degree but you’re slower to respond to the following consecutive turns, second-guessing each one in the hopes you remember correctly. You are inherently less confident.

Confidence builds itself into the orbitofrontal cortex, the space in the brain where reward value is represented. Amongst several other areas of the front of the brain, these spaces are key for computing situations and acting in confidence.

Why does confidence sometimes slip away?

Imagine you are at work and you are going to send a fax to a major account for your office. This is one of those accounts that can make or break the company and if they don’t get this document they will lose thousands of dollars. Sending a fax is something you have done hundreds of times. Recently your office acquired a new fax machine, one you have not used yet but since you have used several throughout your work life, you can’t imagine there are any major differences. When you go to send the fax you learn later that you missed a button and the fax didn’t go through. This machine required one extra step you hadn’t learned. You were so confident in the process that there wasn’t a second thought.

Not only does the receiving party lose money, but your office loses the account altogether for the mistake. Your job is on the line and suddenly this simple act you’ve been doing forever is terrifying. Your confidence is gone.

You now double and triple-check whether the fax was sent and follow up with clients multiple times to make sure they received it. You find a small amount of panic holding your body every time you are asked to send a fax.

This can happen in a multitude of ways and when it does, it sucks. This happens when we get overconfident. When we commit so hard to an idea or a practice or a thought that we blind ourselves to any other possibility. We almost start moving through life on autopilot in those areas and that’s where mistakes can happen. That’s where we watch our confidence falter. Once it starts to teeter, it doesn’t take a lot for it to disappear, but it takes a lot to build it up. So…

How do we keep it?

You know those people that are unabashedly themselves. That will make a mistake and frame it as a ‘whatever’ and ‘it’s not a big deal’. Those people that will still stand back up the next day and preach the next thing and just be committed to what they think they know even if they are wrong?

When you’ve been rattled it’s hard to come back from it. It’s hard to maintain an ‘it is what it is’ attitude and move on, especially if that’s not who you have been.

So how do we keep our confidence even when it’s been challenged?

Let’s go back to the fax machine example. The natural reaction for someone with low confidence is to retreat, maybe even quit. But what if in that moment you were able to look your director in the eyes and say “I made a big mistake and I’m so sorry.” Instead of letting the mistake own you, you are owning the mistake. You are releasing the shame of what happened by taking it head-on. This builds confidence.

This is the start of how you become a grounded, confident individual. This one small action of owning it grows your confidence. Next time you go to send a fax, you are going to check and confirm it went through. Then if your office gets a new fax machine, you are going to double-check the instructions on how to send one. You are going to make sure you know because you already made that mistake. Your confidence initially moved into overconfidence and that is where the mistake was made.

Confidence may be built into our DNA or it may be something we can build and learn. We may stumble and fall and lose the confidence we once had due to overconfident moments. We may build it back through repetition and owning our part in where it went wrong.

I believe there is a line with confidence. If we go too far, we jeopardize others. If we don’t give enough, we jeopardize ourselves. But if we fall right into that perfect balance, we can maintain the most important level of confidence. The one where you stand tall, shoulders back, and are totally unabashedly yourself.

Love always,

Riss