vday doesn’t suck after all

A fun fact about me is that I loooove Valentine’s Day. When I was growing up in Mexico, I never really thought of Valentine’s Day as being exclusive for couples that were in love. I grew up with the idea that it was a day to show love to everyone and appreciate all of your friendships. In Spanish we say it’s “el día del amor y la amistad” which translates to the day of love and friendship. So I guess in my mind that was the first reason to celebrate and if you were in a romantic relationship then obviously, you would celebrate that too.

Sure, it would be nice to spend the day with the love of your life but it’s kind of hard to do that when you maybe haven’t even met that person yet. So just because people are single, does that mean that we have to be deprived of the holiday? I know that Valentine’s Day can be super hard on a lot of people, particularly on those that are going through recent break ups or divorces or just rough times in any relationship. But when I think of Valentine’s Day, I see pink and red and white and hearts all over. I see an opportunity to help others feel good about our friendship and relationship. So this year, I went a little crazy with the celebrations but it was so authentically me.

Last year, I was dating my ex and though he was amazing and thoughtful, he was consumed by his job and honestly, so was I. We didn’t plan anything for Valentine’s Day and I just assumed he was whipping up something special for us. The reality of the situation was that it was on a Monday, one of the busiest days for both of us and I spent it working from his house with his perfect dog and he spent it working at his tennis club. I remember feeling so hurt and upset that he didn’t have something big and grandiose planned because I had all of these massive expectations of our relationship, but at that point, we had only been dating for a couple of months so it really shouldn’t have been a big deal. but it was a big deal to me and I didn’t really understand why. I still don’t understand why, but this year, I made myself a promise that I would detach my happiness from being dependent on other people. Sure, being with my family and friends bring me such joy but I didn’t want to give other people the power to control my entire happiness. Does that even make sense?

I guess i can try to explain more but my ex is quite private and I want to be respectful of that. He was really big on surprises throughout our relationship and that’s just how he is with people in general. He is so thoughtful about a lot of things so I didn’t really understand why he wasn’t really on Valentine’s Day. Twelve months later, I think it wasn’t because he didn’t care about me but maybe because he didn’t care about Valentine’s Day itself and he probably didn’t know how much I did care.

Anyway, this post isn’t meant to be about my ex or romantic relationships at all. I wanted this year to be a happy day and I wanted to help others have a happy day. Like I said, it’s not necessarily the best day for a lot of people and society has a way of making us feel like losers if we’re single on Valentine’s Day. This year, it landed on a Tuesday, which is a day that a lot of my coworkers come into the office. This was good and bad for a couple of reasons. Good, obviously, because there were more people but bad for the same reason. I wanted to celebrate with my immediate teams, which right now is a combination of 3 teams in our group, but each group has other group(s) that we work closely with. I wanted to buy lunch for them but as I sat down to estimate number of people, I always found myself adding another person or group so they wouldn’t feel excluded. It was getting out of hand and definitely out of budget.

I was upset and discouraged because I felt my valentines plans slipping through my fingers. I was determined to do something and at the eleventh hour, I connected with some execs of our group to help have an event that was inclusive to the entire floor, which consisted of 2 departments. We ordered sandwiches from Potbelly and partnered with some folks internally raising money and awareness for heart disease and sent an email to the whole floor. On top of that, I’m a sucker for good marketing, so I bought a giant heart shaped, red velvet insomnia cookie, which was absolutely to die for. That wasn’t enough for me, though. I wanted to go all out so I went to Amazon and ordered every heart shaped thing I could find. My doorman was laughing at me because I had so many boxes being delivered each day, but with each box I got more and more excited for the actual day.

I was excited for many reasons but the biggest one was that I finally had an excuse to wear this bright red, polka dotted skirt. I’ve had it in my closet for a long time… it was my grandmother’s skirt from my dad’s side, who passed away several years ago. I always talk about my other grandma who is some level of famous because of her tennis accolades, but I was really close with all of my grandparents. My parents worked crazy hours and all four of my grandparents stepped in to take care of me and help out wherever they could. Anyway, I never wear that skirt because it’s so special to me but I couldn’t think of a more perfect occasion than Valentine’s Day. Also, like when would I ever be able to wear that skirt to the office?

I joined this new department in my firm like 9-ish months ago, I think? And I have had many moments of doubt. I was so comfortable in my old job. I knew everyone and everyone knew me. It was hard to start over in a way and I get so nervous meeting new people. For the majority of the time I’ve been on this new team, we’ve experienced a ton of change so every time I felt like I was getting the hang of things, another change would be announced. It honestly felt like those moving staircases at Hogwarts in Harry Potter. Change is not bad though, it often creates new opportunities but I was so sick of it, to be completely honest. Introducing myself and giving random fun facts about myself was getting old hahaha but I just felt like it was hard to be myself. I didn’t know any of these people really or their sense of humor. We work at a very traditional place but I’m quite silly and goofy and I was feeling so drained from trying to be a restricted or toned down version of myself.

Over the past few months, I’ve started to find some sort of normalcy and stability at work and accepted that change is part of that new normal. I have also increased my knowledge of this new world I work in which has helped me become more confident when I have to reach out to new people or other groups. Our MD said something about confidence being directly related to our competence in a subject matter and I could not relate to that more. As a result of all of these things, I finally felt comfortable being a less restricted version of myself.

It was finally Valentines Day… I woke up feeling like a kid of Christmas morning. I was so excited to get to the office and set everything up. I went to get dressed and put the red skirt on but asked myself if it was too much. I had already told everyone that it was my favorite holiday and I felt like I had to deliver. I had tried on the outfit with jeans instead, and it was really cute but I felt like I had already committed to going all out and that’s exactly what I did. If I’m too much for them then we will just deal with that later. I put the red skirt back on and hauled a massive box of valentines goodies to the office. I was breaking a sweat by the time I got to my seat but we made it. I’m on the earlier side of arrivals in the office usually, so I had some time to organize the chaos a bit that I was creating at my desk. I had heart shaped lollipops, squishy glow in the dark funky animal looking things that went in hearts, chocolate, heart shaped pens, and I can’t even remember what else. It was amazing.

I greeted as many people as I could with a heart shaped lollipop and a cheerful “Happy Valentine’s Day” and a smile flashed across all of their faces. Some were like wtf is going on but others were all about it from the get go. I felt like I was making a difference and it made me feel so happy and comfortable. Finally, people could see the type of person I am outside of the context of meetings and working and I got to meet and know some people that I rarely or never talked to. I had this overwhelming feeling of satisfaction because I could tell that people were coming out of their shells. I know some folks on our floor are friendly but shy so I felt like this made it possible for them to connect with people they don’t usually talk to.

At the actual lunch, it was kind of like first come, first served and the sandwiches went quick! We laid out a bunch of heart shaped pens that write incredibly well and some heart shaped red and pink sunglasses. Our company is traditional and even I used to think it was stuffy before I joined, but now that I have been here for 6 years, across multiple departments, I know that everyone has a fun and silly side and it was so nice to tap into that. We work really hard to make impossible timelines work and a lot of times we work through lunch and put other things aside to make things work for work, but it’s important to build connections with work people that don’t involve work at all.

By the end of the day I was absolutely exhausted… like totally drained. It was so amazing to share that with my new coworkers but my social battery just does not last that long. It took a lot out of me but I was really happy that I did that. I walked, well it was more like I dragged myself into my apartment building and was greeted by my favorite doorman. He recently had been in the hospital for some sort of heart problem but he was back and had the brightest smile I had seen all day. He smiled at my ridiculous outfit and we chatted for a bit. He also knew that my dad had been in the hospital for heart problems last year so we bonded over that. He asks me about him each time he sees me. I went to pick up yet another package and he laughed and said “wait a minute, I want to give you something.” He pulled out this cute little cut out heart and gave me a hug and I literally almost cried.

I wasn’t sad at all, on the contrary, I was elated. I had spent all day doing that for other people and to walk into that just warmed me heart. You all already know what I’m gonna say — in that moment, I thought to myself “I am the luckiest girl in the world”. I’ve become obsessed with chasing and creating these lucky moments and felt so happy and at peace on Valentine’s Day. So no, you don’t need a prince charming to make your Valentine’s Day, or any fucking day for that matter, special. Be your own prince charming.

xoxoxo

marn