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Feb 15 2012

I disagree with JT Eberhard – Valentine’s day is actually kind of fun

Categories:

Love, Personal

by Avicenna

I actually disagree that Valentine’s Day sucks. I quite like it, it’s a silly day where you are encouraged to be silly and romantic. You don’t need that excuse on other days but sometimes it’s nice to be part of the crowd. 
Look, days like Christmas, Valentine’s Day and all the other days are just days where people do something special. The meaning of christmas to some people is Jesus and all that jazz, but I was a Hindu. Christmas was about sitting with your family and laughing as you try to make “white people food”, complain about it being too bland and then spicing up the recipes (My turkey used to be cooked in a tandoori and we had curry rather than gravy). You can still enjoy something even if it doesn’t mean the same thing to you. 
Yes, it sucks to be single on Valentine’s Day. But you know what? If you are single and you think it’s a problem then every event where you are in contact with people in relationships is irritating. A simple dinner with my cousins often turns into me looking awkwardly at the ceiling while they discuss “married people things”. Being an odd numbered wheel sucks sometimes. Being the odd wheel around a public display of affection sucks. The only difference between Valentine’s Day and any other day is the quantity of people who are doing the whole PDA thing. It’s the same at Christmas or Easter or any day where people get together in large groups with their significant others and you are on your own around a lot of booze.

And I had to spend Christmas holidays this year by myself locked in a room with medical textbooks instead of with my family. I had a break for a few days for a friend’s wedding but my holiday was mainly educational. Let’s just say that calling it a “depressing holiday” is an understatement. Imagine knowing that you HAVE to sit and study while every person you know is out eating, drinking and having fun? Imagine seeing all your friends get married, settle down and have a kid while you don’t even have the time to go out and get a beer. It all sucks when you aren’t getting it but you know what? It’s my choice to trade in my 20s in exchange for a medical degree and it’s my choice to get my degree in India. So I can complain but I cannot change the reality of the situation. 

I have been single for 2 years and 8 months now. In that time period I have had a single proper fling and that was less about a feasible relationship and more about “high school reunion with someone who I fancied and vice versa who lives on the other side of the globe and who I hadn’t seen since I was 15″. And it frankly sucks, but what makes it suck isn’t the fact that all the people in relationships are having fun or have a day where they rub it in my face. It sucks because I have an issue with it. I mean that’s like saying that I shouldn’t hit on women around my friends who are in monogamous relationships because they cannot. I am pretty much doomed to a bare minimum of another 3 years of being single. I pretty much live and work in a place where 
  1. The normal dating arena is way too expensive for me. I make roughly 700 rupees a week. A drink in a bar is 120 rupees .Entry into most clubs is often more expensive than what I get a week as a stipend and my stipend mainly is spent on food and treats.
  2. Where I have a completely different cultural upbringing to the people who surround me and so have absolutely nothing in common 
  3. Where my baldness is a major issue to the point where people have stopped me in the street to ask me if I had an accident or cancer and where people actively pity me for my hair loss at such a young age.
  4. My course treats me as a dog’s body and tends to give me the worst jobs. HIV/AIDS patients are the modern day lepers and thus I am stuck working with them. My choice of who I work with makes me a social pariah to a lot of people.

And what would insult me more is if people treated me like my feelings were so delicate and fragile that I would be insulted if I were to see people having fun on Valentine’s Day. No more so than my feelings being insulted for seeing people having fun on Christmas or Easter or St. Patrick’s Day or pretty much any other day of the year. And you know what? One day I will not be stuck here, one day I will be back home and one day I will have a social life. And at that point, I wouldn’t want to have to pussy foot around someone else worrying about their feelings with regards to my relationship.

So don’t worry about us single people. We don’t have someone to date, it doesn’t mean we are big giant babies. Most of us can handle Valentine’s Day just fine!

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