On this Sunday....

On Tuesday of this week, my roommate presented me with a cartoon of a woman violently bludgeoning a pair of significant others with a caption that read, “On this Valentine’s Day, try not to savagely attack happy couples.” She told me the ludicrous scenario reminded her of me. I thanked for bringing the cartoon to my attention and I said I would do my best not to assault any pairs of lovers that I might encounter on Sunday. I handed it back to her and then we laughed about the absurdity of it all.

As all three of my roommates know very well, I was, until very recently, involved with someone I cared very much about. But it was an unhealthy relationship. I always knew that. And so it ended. It ended as crazily as it began. And when it ended, I’m afraid to say that I did indeed become that terrible cliché. There were chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream binges (pints were honestly disappearing by the hour), there were two whole days when I could not get out of bed (the prospect of the outside world just seemed overrated), and there was one day where all I did was watch French foreign language romance films in the dark (and I don’t even know very much French). When my roommates walked in on me during my French romance episodes, they shouted, “What are you? Some kind of masochist?” After that, I snapped out of it. I started eating again (who knew it was so great?) and I even started doing a rigorous workout schedule at the gym. I’ve been on the road to full recovery for some time now, but with Valentine’s Day looming, my roommates and family members are slightly concerned about me. But they really have no need to be. I won’t be out there attacking happy couples any time soon.

Besides, in some cases even the whole “couple” thing isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. I find it somewhat funny that on the same day my roommate handed me that cartoon, just a few days before Valentine’s Day, I also read an article about a woman who admitted to killing her husband by spiking his drink with a date rape drug and clubbing him with a brass ornament. Now that’s what I would deem a savage attack. But I’m not a cynic and it’s not like I don’t believe in love or anything like that. I just know that sometimes there are couples like this woman and her now deceased husband who bludgeon each other with brass ornaments and sometimes there are couples like my parents who have stayed happily married for the last thirty-seven years. I just know that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

On that note, on my bedroom wall, I have four square-shaped scarves hanging each with a Sepia colored movie still pinned in the center. One is from the movie “Chocolat” and diagonal from that is one from Billy Wilder’s “Sabrina” and above that are the main characters from “It Happened One Night” and diagonal from those two are the two once-upon-a-time lovers from the great film “Casablanca.” My wall essentially showcases what looks like happy couples but in the films themselves, not all of the relationships work out by the closing credits. In “It Happened One Night,” yes the characters get married by the end but in “Casablanca,” Ingrid Bergman’s character leaves him and gets on the plane. I see these images every night before bed. They are a mixture of cinematic relationships that worked and cinematic relationships that didn’t. And I feel that’s what a lot of real life is made up of – relationships that work and relationships that don’t. And this Valentine’s Day, I won’t be upset about the people who have relationships that are working merely because I had a relationship that didn’t. After all, couples don’t make me bitter and they don’t make me unhappy either. And they certainly don’t make me angry that I’m now single. Maybe they deserve to go along with out the threat of being savagely attacked. Well maybe.

-Krystal A. Vazquez