I’ve never gotten a valentine. I’ve received exactly one rose in my entire life from a man who boughtme a single one from a worn out woman in Bangkok before I tore it upinto little pieces and put it in his pocket.
Not one to be outdone, the man scooped the disassembled flower from his khaki shorts just as quickly as it had arrived and dumped it into the empty bucket of Sang Som and Red Bull that stood between us quietly changing colour in the neon light as we tried not to laugh. Or throttle each other.
Maybe it’s that sort of behaviour that has ushered me here.
To this Valentine’s Day morning without the slightest expectation of a rose, a card or a cute gesture from someone who doesn’t think I’m a colossal weirdo. In a good way.
I guess the rub is that I wanted to buy that rose for myself.
I saw the slight Thai woman coming towards us and noticed how humble and understated she was compared to the garish almost aggressively beautiful waitresses and street walkers who seemed to feast on the night with fangs made phenomenal by plastic surgery and I wanted to help her.
Me. Another woman from another country. But instead, and contrary to what I am used to, a hero swooped in with the sweetest of intentions and, before I knew it, she was gone. And I had a rose. One that I hadn’t earned. One that I didn’t know what to do with.
So I tore it up. And the next day when he was long gone, I bought another rose from another seller and I felt triumphant. Settled. Assured of love. If only from myself.
I feel the same way today.
Even though the world tells me I should be depressed about the fact that I don’t have a man swooping in to save me from the mortification of being single on Valentine’s Day, I’m not.
Like many single, coupled or loved up ladies, I know that a love which is just as important as the love shared between two people is the love that a woman has for herself. Not a vain and vapid love prone to taking selfies.
Instead, a love that rises beyond body image bombardment from meddlesome magazines to see beauty in booty, blemishes, sideburns and scars.
A love that sees the women of this country being massacred and told our lives aren’t worth more than the preservation of a man’s ego but fails to believe it because in her core she feels the fire that will burn such notions to the ground.
A love that withstands pettiness, patriarchy and days of disrespect because she knows you can only attempt to pull down what is strong and standing up.
A love that grows every time a woman shows love to someone she doesn’t know just because they are begging, exhausted in a queue, short one dollar of their taxi fare… and human.
It is the love a woman has for her quirks, for her wild way of doing things and the odd things that incense her.
It is love that can be celebrated on Valentine’s Day by doing a little something special for ourselves, whether we are single, strange, coupled or quirky simply because we love and appreciate being alive on this day. In this feminine skin.
So go on and write “I love me” on a piece of paper, hold it up to a mirror and watch your face break into the beauty of your smile and let that be your valentine. A love letter to yourself.
Because we are roses.
Beautiful and tough as thorns.
– marth__vader on Twitter.
