Be my valentine...

Please? No? Oh okay.

I'm not here to bitch about valentine's day, my bitterness toward the tedious tradition has more or less vanished. Now I'm just curious and mature enough to admit that the bitterness stems from my jealousy of those who are lucky enough to have that significant other to make them feel special even if it is just for a day. Ever notice that is the one argument people use to criticise valentine's day - "why is there only one day dedicated to making your partner feel special? blahh blahh blahhhh". What's really wrong with that? If there can be a day dedicated to pancakes, why is the thought of a day dedicated to recognising and celebrating the love shared between two people so unbearable to some?
Now I've never had a valentine...ever (giving you a moment to all take that in and pick your jaws up from the floor after that shocking reveal ) I've just never been lucky enough to stay in a relationship long enough for valentine's day to come around. That, however doesn't mean that I lose hope and shrivel into a little, black ball of misery, I still get to enjoy the great sales on chocolates in stores, what more can I ask for? (A valentine)

The dangers of high expectations...

Today, I turned 18 and now I'm pessimistic about optimism. 

I have been looking forward to this day for a very long time, as soon as I turned 16 to be precise. So naturally I had placed this age, this big one eight as they say on a pedestal. I envisioned it to be epic, I also imagined that I would feel different too; Instead what I actually felt was a big disappointment, I also felt very unfulfilled. As soon as I woke up, I reflected on my 18 years of existence and realised that that's all I really did. I just existed. So far I have failed to actually live and that scared me a bit so I swiftly pushed that thought away and vowed to myself to enjoy the day.

Enjoying the day however, proved to be far more difficult than I had anticipated. 

There was this awkward period where I sat in the canteen alone, which is daunting enough on a normal day but on my birthday it was such a dreadful feeling and to make matters worse, I had a gift bag so people knew it was my birthday. I wanted to shrink into a microscopic size so that I would be invisible to the naked eye but unfortunately turning 18 didn't come with magical powers. To avoid making eye contact with anyone, I did what anyone in my situation would do: pretend to be texting. Luckily a friend of mine turned up and I didn't feel so abandoned.

The misery continued at home, my mother tried so hard to be nice to me but she just couldn't help herself, it was so apparent  how difficult it was for her to make this one day out of 365 feel special for me and in the end I think she just gave up trying. 

To be honest today wasn't especially bad, it was just like any other day which would have been fine if this was just any other day. You see to every one else it was but to me, it is my anniversary of life and I had high expectations for it and that was where I went wrong.