Tuesday, February 12, 2013

I Complete Me

Valentine's Day is coming, or as fans of Homestarrunner.com's Teen Girl Squad might say, "Vamlumtime's Day". Alongside people buying gifts for their beloveds or desired beloveds, there are people who use this day to be miserable and some might even mope, feeling that another person will make them complete.

I say bullshit. Yes, being single in a sea of married and dating peers can be an emotional trial full of frustration, despair, loneliness, and self-doubt — one that I live — but still, bullshit.

However, a peer of mine put it a lot more eloquently. She is improvisor/instructor/whirlwind Jill Bernard, one of the three founding members of HUGE Theater, which all people in the TwinCities should visit if they don't already. Jill had this to say and a lot of people are quoting it with good reason. Read it, take it to heart, and take it to the bank:

"If you do not have a significant other and you are feeling hurt by Valentine's Day, please give yourself the best Valentines Day on the planet. Please treat yourself to whatever makes you happiest. Be your own significant other, because you are very very significant. You do have someone to share it with, it's you. You are a person and you are more than enough, and it's not that you're not good enough for anyone else, you are, but you're also good enough for you. I thought this before I had a boyfriend and I will continue to think it after he dies from eating too much cheesy rice and sausage.

BESIDES. BESIDES. If it is really your goal to have a significant other, other people like whole people. They don't like half people who only exist as defined by others. So go ahead, be whole, be complete, have a rich interesting life and make yourself a little nest that is perfect for you but could also expand. It took me a long time to figure that out and then I got a boyfriend so now my opinion seems like 'that's easy for you to say' but it wasn't."