You may have heard of my birthday. It’s kind of familiar (infamous? Depends on who you’re talking to.) It smirks, gasps, nods understandingly or apologizes – “heck, your birthday depression probably really hit! ” If you’re reading this when I publish this article, chances are you know where it’s going. Yes, I have a birthday on Valentine’s Day.
Remember, Valentine’s Day is my birthday.
When I was younger, the realization that February 14 was more than a day when I decided to wear pink, visited distant relatives every year and rightly waited for my favorite dessert for my birthday – strawberry cheesecake, was definitely a kind of recalibration. Getting annual vaccinations has always been a scary process, but I always blushed when I heard the phrase “birthday on Valentine’s Day? So you get two presents! ” Honestly, this coincidence made sense to me – it confirmed my already steadfast protagonist syndrome (yes, I read too much Juni B. Jones!)
As I got older, two ideals – what is a birthday and what is Valentine’s Day – led to frequent mental clashes in the annual reassessment that comes with birthdays. Birthdays are usually a holiday of oneself, and Valentine’s Day is usually a holiday of romantic love. Inevitably, in my head was the main focus of my love life; The overall context of the day was already romantic, so trying to celebrate another last year, I couldn’t help but place too much emphasis on my romantic successes or pitfalls last year. If it was my fault, if it was his fault, if only the general circumstances? Have I learned to gradually allay my fears over the last year? Even as I write this, I am embarrassed to express these thoughts, fearing that their annual frequency will become a kind of ritual to which I return year after year.
In recent years (translation: literally last year) I have tried to prefer the concept of self-love, above all. I am proud of my followers @wetheurban in Instagram, and shamelessly had a lot of posts from his account as a lock screen. Whether it’s either doing poems will.i.am and Fergie in “Meet Me Halfway” on the way to Kroger on Crooks and Livernois, or cooking my favorite oatmeal that by chance no one in my family likes, I’ve always been more than good to hang out with yourself. Not to look like my very clear label of business skill, on good days I think of potential men in my life (or prospects as I like to call them in group chat) as part of adding value. I (again, most days) are more than happy with the self, platonic and family love in my life, so look most men by the metric of complementarity, not necessity.
So I said a lot of “majority” in this paragraph. From time to time there is a breakdown in which every idea, which I considered unshakably strong, is called into question. Due to the lack of a better term I almost (never admit completely) being) down bad. And then my brain splits into two areas, like two mini-versions of Cronk talking to him on each shoulder in “The Emperor’s New Groove”. One side is always justified (maybe he can’t speak)and the other nods in frustration (and you decide to put up with it?).
I suspect romance too dangerous can destroy your glass shield of selfishness. Beyoncé was never wrong, and she was definitely right when she said that we love dangerously and we love madly (Jay-Z screams somewhere out there, “YES!”). to find love, admiration and pride for myself, right after that I was thrown into a cluster that is a scene of “dating” in college, if you can even call it that. So, on the one hand, I repeat “I’m healthy, I’m rich” and on the other I say, “Whatever he does …” The new girl is against the cool girl. I. what girl against i want to be your the girl. While my birthday and love day have just passed, I ponder where the real Elijah actually lies.
And then I think about the chart of human emotions and feelings that one of my best friends showed me at the peak of one of my hobbies as a boy (
Yes, I may have felt a little like a kindergarten pupil, but the image of this graphic remained in my mind as a symbol of complexity and duality not only of me but of all of us. We have whole universes of emotions and feelings – one day you (and I) can be stoic and collected, and the next day we can be passionate and alive. Bad skininess, as my above-mentioned group chat came up with, is not a contract you sign for eternity to never feel the emotions as Ariel gave her voice to Ursula. For me, it’s trusting your mind and being kind to yourself. Nowadays and the age when emotions are seen as a duty, I fall into many mental traps, considering myself weak, and “all talk, zero play” when it comes to being Miss Independent. Then there is a sense of cognitive dissonance: we objectively know our value on paper, but do not act on that knowledge for a vague reason that may one day reveal self-reflection (or therapy). So, on the one hand, some of us feel “bad,” and on the other hand, we simultaneously give ourselves a hard time when we are in that state of mind.
Modern media discourse about relationships and love gives many arguments about the benefits of emotionlessness and heartlessness, but if this heart inevitably feels it, we may think we have betrayed our 21st century model of norms. What’s more, touch on the image of the “cool girl” for men (or, as I call it, participating in choose me an industrial complex) further emphasizes that your perception in the male gaze is higher than who you really are. In general, in relationships, situations, and all the gaps between them, student culture seems to operate on the modality of not resorting to true emotions. Many of us internally try to rebuild our brains so as not to worry and think that wanting a man in our lives is weak. Outwardly, we are simultaneously trying to convince them that we are not worried about their emotional inaccessibility, always “go with the flow.” What is the end result? An all-encompassing sense of disunity, one way or another, in which we refuse to acknowledge or prioritize what we feel and want to do in one way or another in the midst of personal inscription.
So if you find yourself in the same realm of cognitive dissonance as I am, my unwanted advice is not to warn your heart, but treat it with compassion. Somewhere out there my friends who gave me the same advice are reading this now, rolling their eyes, and yes, I am giving advice that was hard for me to take. Where I am now, I will learn about the strongest person in my life: about myself. When I think about how my feelings may not be completely linear, I remind myself that we all act on a range of emotions, getting involved and coming out of them based on the pure nature of our tendencies and past experiences. I know I really love myself, my family, friends, my Spotify playlists or whoever it is.
On days (such as this, not like most) on which I scoff at the mention that my birthday was Valentine’s Day, I try to remind myself that something in the universe was created in order to realize my existence on a day when many around the world were celebrating love. I take it as an honor and as a result am not afraid of all the different shades in which my love is expressed. And maybe that gives me one last word – I’m not ashamed to hope that when Mr. He thinks of love, he thinks of me. Anyway, I know I am.
MiC Managing Editor Elijah Imtiaz can be contacted at eliyai@umich.edu