Motherless

Valentine’s has always been unfortunate. The circumstances always come up oil-soaked, and I like discarding it in a trash bin with the previous day’s eggshells and paper towels. 

On Valentine’s two years ago I accidentally hit someone with my car. It wasn’t a grand, awful collision, only me coming home from work, late at night, and arriving at a stop sign. I look both ways, no one, and I proceed, only for a man on the sidewalk with a German Shepard on a leash to step out of the dark and into the road. I slam on the brakes and his hand hits my hood. He stumbles, drunk, holding a beer can in the other hand. 

I assume he will step back, allow me to proceed, so I press on the gas, but he takes a step in front of my car again, his hand slamming down on my hood. I stop, slam on my horn, and he stumbles across the street and down the sidewalk. 

When I get home that night, I break down in my driveway, crying over all sorts of things, a pattern common for Valentine’s — expected almost. 

This year, I get my first graduate school rejection. It’s not so surprising, but it stings nonetheless. And it brings up other thoughts, spirals about failure, and worthlessness, and the terror that everyone is thinking the worst of me. And if I never go anywhere, or become someone, how will I ever be someone to love? 

So, I buy a cherry cola Big Gulp and walk around Camino Ruiz Park, brown brush and dirt path, until I reach a lookout with a view of the deep canyons of San Diego suburbia. Phoebe Bridgers plays in my headphones, she’s assuring, “It’s for the better.” 

It’s fifty-six degrees outside, so the Big Gulp and hole-filled jean jacket were a miscalculation and the tears only come three at a time, slow going down so they wet the cheeks and stain them red. 

A young couple approaches and asks me to take a golden hour photo of them. The woman is blonde and ecstatic, smiling with her teeth, face blushing and dewy. The man has a short ponytail, glasses, he’s wearing a royal blue quarter zip. Maybe he works in tech, or an office job that makes his home life preferable. She is what looks like five months pregnant, the bump hidden under the ivy pattern of her dress. 

I take the photos, several of them, bending to get a better angle, and then I hand her back the phone. They say thank you and I think of all the awful irony of the scene, at least I am someone who seems nice enough to ask a favor. They leave. 

I don’t tell anyone about the graduate school rejection, and I can no longer tell if my tightlippedness is a result of the people in my life or a self-inflicted malady. Either way, I can’t bring myself to speak it to anyone, I sit with it on that lookout. 

It’s bad timing. The writing is good, but it’s also not going well. Making myself sit in front of the computer is a task, and I consider writing a Craigslist ad, something like, “seeking kind stranger to hold gun to my head until the manuscript-in-progress is finished. Preferably willing to strap me to a desk chair. Must be nice (but not too nice) about it.” 

This Valentine’s reminds me I am not an easy person to love. I don’t communicate and I am judgemental — I am hurt by words and actions often, but never voice this. Instead, I let the hurt stew until it shrivels my insides, and the damage is irreparable. The person will never know they’ve slighted me. But I can’t bring myself to find a solution because this may be one of those irreparable character flaws, and are we not all entitled to one or two? 

Sitting at the lookout, there are houses in the distance, backyards dotted with pools and wooden play structures, white fences, and grass. The park’s lot is full, parents standing by metal fences watching little boys in baseball uniforms run the bases. Meeting with the coach to game plan the upcoming season. They are all living lives and it dawns on me that I don’t have a life, only moments when I feel alive, and the rest is a lot of nothingness. 

By the time the sun has set the sky is a water color orange at the bottom, leading into blue. The trees in the background are black shapes, palm tree figures, and pencil-drawn oaks. I try imagining what it might be like to have a child and a partner and we take the child to baseball practice, but the film is not believable. The crew is caught in the background, the extras are wearing dresses instead of jeans and ball caps, there’s a boom mic in the corner of the shot. 

If I could just see past Valentine’s or the next year, I would feel much better. There would be a salve on the wound. But it’s difficult when nothing happens, day in and day out. Hoping for more and disappointed every time. I don’t tell anyone about the graduate school rejection because they might disappoint me, they won’t hug me, or come over just to lay on my bed in the low light listening to music. So, I don’t bother to give them the chance to disappoint. Because when they do, I’ll resent them for it, and never tell them so. 

I dislike Valentine’s, for all the consumerist, deeply single reasons. And when I have these thoughts every day, adding extra painful layers is not needed. 

I want very badly to someday be in love. And I know very well it may never happen. I have made peace with both of these sentences, and the dichotomy swishes awkwardly and upsets the stomach. It makes living and thinking very confusing. 

I would like very much for someone to tell me it’s going to be okay, in an authoritative way, with their hands on my cheeks and their eyes looking directly into mine. I would like them to lay out exactly how it will be okay and when. 

I need to look into the future to enjoy the present. That is the real flaw. 

This Valentine’s is no surprise. I hope the couple and their soon-to-be new baby enjoy the holiday. I hope they are satisfied, so the unsatisfied can go about life with examples that life will not always be this way. It gets better. So I’m told.