Un-Valentine's Day

Not feeling the love.
Not wanting the love.
Not needing the love.
Valentine's day is all about love.  The love you have for your current partner, an intimate kind of love.  The love where you want to share your very being with someone else.  Valentine's Day is not about the lasting love you have for your children, family, friends, pets.  The love you feel for your city when the plane touches down and you see Table Mountain before you.  That love is not celebrated.  Instead we give cards and gifts to lovers who slip in and out of our lives.  Fleeting moments we try desperately to hang onto.
I have never been lucky in that intimate kind of love.  Bad choices, never choosing someone who is good for me.  I accept all the blame for that.  Loving someone so much that you lose yourself and who you are is not love.  My grandmother always used to say that you can't be loved until you love yourself.  When you forget who you are and try to be someone you're not then you are not loving yourself.
My last relationship was the final straw for me.  It made me realize that I am not relationship material.  I let the other person become all-consuming so that I forgot who I was.  That is not good.  I'm not sure if it was that final relationship and final betrayal which killed that ability to love another intimately or if it was the scalpel which cut out the cancer which cut that kind of love out of me, but I just know that I don't feel it anymore.  I don't even miss it or long for it.  That part of me has gone.  Dead and dried up.
But this isn't sad, it's good.  It means that now I focus on me and my children.
Cindy Vine is the author of Survival Tips for the Suddenly Single and Fear, Phobias and Frozen Feet - both are available on Amazon in kindle and print format.