Happy Valentines Day...Assuming You Don't Read This

"Want to buy some illusions? Slightly used, just like new. Such romantic illusions, and they're all about you. I sell them all for a penny, they make pretty souvenirs. Take my lovely illusions, some for laughs, some for tears."
-Erica Von Schluetow, "A Foreign Affair"
"Love, love, you know what love is? Love is an illusion created by lawyer types like yourself to perpetuate another illusion called marriage to create the reality of divorce and then the illusionary need for divorce lawyers."
-Kevin, "St. Elmo's Fire"
"True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen."
-François Duc de La Rochefoucauld


Greetings and welcome back to the Un-Zone, the only site on the Internet devoted to all things related to Un. This site, pretty much, is all about me and what I find interesting. If you don't like this, well, there's always another website to go to. Kindly hit the Back Icon or find a link you might enjoy on the sidebar. I hear that Google is a great site...unless you're in Myanmar. They don't have the Internet.
If you haven't realized by now, today is Valentine's Day. If you are male, currently in a relationship and you don't realize this fact, despite you significant other breathing down your neck and asking what you are going to do today...I pity you. If you are living where it is snowing or previously snowed, bundle up. If you thought it's cold outside, it will get extremely warm soon. And not in a pleasant way.

I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. There are several reasons, but the most important reason is that I am single, so celebrating Valentine’s Day is a pointless exercise in futility. I could go on with the many reasons I am single and it will all come in due time, but not now. The second reason is just as logical. If I am in a relationship, it will fail, no matter what I do.
Any relationship that I have in the future will inevitably fail. It will crash and burn at some unknown point in time. Even if it is the one that I think will “last forever,” it will fail. It’s bound to happen. What is the reason for this failure? No woman will make me happy. Before you think that I have unrealistic standards, I have to add in the following. I will never make any woman happy.
Maybe I should rephrase this in a different way. Any relationship I am in will never be a realistic relationship. It will be some version of a Hollywood-movie cliché that we can never achieve. In some way, we'll be wondering if our relationship is fitting some theoretical model based upon a chick-flick, some romance novel, or some perfect relationship we see on television. We’ll both be thinking that romance will hit me suddenly and it will happen in due time. It will happen as long as I wait and keep on believing…just like any one of those sappy love songs you hear on the radio.
That’s the problem. Success or failure will be measured on some unrealistic standard, what you call fake love, love that never happens. Song lyrics give you some vague version of love that makes sense. It’s how love is supposed to feel. Girls are supposed to fall in love with the boy, no matter what people say, because it's the right thing to do. Love is a many splendored thing (and last forever) when it doesn't we're supposed to ask why we're falling in love and we're supposed to get bitter about it. But when it's good, it's good.
In order to show your love, what do you do? You buy them roses and chocolates on Valentine's Day. And to really show your love, you do the jewelry route. Not just any kind of sparkly rock, but a diamond. After all, as the commercials say, "A Diamond Lasts Forever." Love doesn't. People want to believe it and that by believing it, you’re going to have everything end perfectly (just like Bridget Jones's Diary or When Harry Met Sally or…you get the point of this). The concept of fake love created by movies and popular culture is powerful. And hell, I'm probably thinking like this right now.
I’ll never know if my relationship is going well, as there is no standard. We’re all trying to live like a perky sitcom couple who seems perfect. If I show my affection in a sane manner, she probably won’t like me. If I do what pop culture says what is right, despite what I think about pop culture or what society thinks is right, then I won’t be happy in some way. I might as well have an unconventional and impractical relationship, but now, the unconventional and unacceptable relationship is now acceptable and cool. I lose in either case.
Maybe people aren’t falling for pop culture. I’m not the most handsome person. I’m what you might consider to be funny, kind of emotionally detached, nerd and academic, an inherently one of those quiet “nice guys.” In Hollywood terms, I have the Woody Allen/Billy Crystal double-play. Woody Allen gave smart and funny guys who may not be handsome the hope that a beautiful girl might date you (in a million years or so). I'm sorry, that bit rarely works. Despite what everyone might say, people are looking for good-looking people. It sounds vain and superficial, but it's the truth.
Billy Crystal played Harry in When Harry Met Sally; this movie was based on the “best friends becoming soul mates” premise. Again, it’s not going to happen in reality. It never works because one person is completely oblivious about the other person’s affections or knows about them and will never date the other person in a million years. I’m going for the latter possibility. To be perfectly honest, there have been many times, more than I can remember, where I've wanted to ask certain people out, but never did. This might be seen as a sign or cowardice, but I consider it a sign of practicality and acceptance of reality. As much as I might like to believe something might result from it (positive results), it's not going to happen. I might be friends with them, but I'm not going to expect anything more from it. Especially when the other person is not reacting in a manner that might indicate wanting more for the relationship other than friendship. On the other hand, any single, attractive females are welcome to prove me wrong.
Fake love might be worth it. At least when I wake up on February 15 and as I eat a bowl of cereal, someone will be at the other end of the table, looking at me. Most likely, they’ll intensely look at me with dagger-like eyes, resenting the silence. Because the silence means silence, and not some profound statement that has some deeper symbolic meaning. It means that it is all over. It will be the first real thing about the relationship. There will be no more empty and meaningless phrases that sounded so wittily intelligent. I’ll sit there wanting to disappear, to melt into the background, to get far away from there. Only because I tried to be an Icarus in relationships. Reaching for the Sun when staying close to the ground might have been better.
Depressing? No, that’s what happens in real life. Sad but true. You know, I think I'm going to eat my cereal alone. For a long while. And be happy about it.


Oh, for all of you people in relationships right now...Happy Valentine's Day.