Better read while listening to “La vie en rose” by Louis Armstrong.
February means one thing: the celebration of love.
What a beautiful thing it is to wake up to breakfast in bed, fresh flowers waiting for you, and a present chosen with care. Yes, Saint Valentine’s Day may be a capitalist invention, but so is Christmas. And yet, we still light the candles.
To the cynics who proudly declare, “We celebrate our love every day, not just on Valentine’s Day,” I have a simple question:
What did you do today to show it?
Because love deserves rituals. Even small ones.
For me, Valentine’s Day has always carried a teenage kind of excitement. I would spend weeks thinking about the perfect gift, imagining how to make the day feel intentional. I loved the anticipation. I loved seeing them laugh, knowing we both understood the symbolism, that this day was like any other, and yet we chose to make it special.
Love deserves a day.
Not because we forget how to love.
But because life makes us forget to nurture it.
Work, bills, responsibilities, exhaustion. Adulthood has a way of draining romance from the everyday. Rituals exist for a reason. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Celebrations. They remind us to pause. To look at the person next to us and remember why we chose them.
Even if we don’t believe in consumerism, we can believe in intention.
So yes! if we need one day to remember to bring flowers home, let that day exist.
Yet this year, I’ll spend Valentine’s Day alone.
But not lonely.
Romantic love may not be in the cards for me this February, but self-love certainly is.
I’m planning the changes I want to see in my life. I’m going to the gym. I’m cooking my favourite meal. I already bought myself my favourite flowers, and no, they’re not roses, despite what my ex-boyfriends assumed. I have my favourite wine. I’ll light candles. I’ll romanticise my own life.
Because I’m here.
Because I survived years when I didn’t want to be.
Because I deserve every bit of love I have to give.
And if love is worth celebrating,
then I am worth celebrating too.
In the past, I was lucky enough to have partners who made this day special, not just on February 14th, but randomly. They were the kind of men who saw something small and thought of me. Who brought flowers home without an occasion. Who chose me in quiet, ordinary ways.
I am the same kind of person.
I believe in romance, not only in relationships, but in everyday life.
The other day, a colleague gave me a small keychain: a tiny bottle of wine with two glasses attached. She said, simply, “I saw it and thought of you.”
That’s it. That’s love.
She gained nothing from giving it to me. But I gained something immeasurable: the feeling of being seen.
I carried it like a trophy for days. Not because it was expensive. But because it meant someone chose tenderness.
Those small gestures shape us. They teach us that love doesn’t always need grand declarations. Sometimes it just needs attention.
And maybe that’s why I defend this day so fiercely.
I didn’t grow up in a home where love was loud.
So I learned to notice love when it appears. To protect it.
To practice it.
I believe in love not because it has always been easy for me, but because I know what its absence does.
Cruelty is loud.
Cynicism is fashionable.
Indifference is easy.
Tenderness takes effort.
Of course, we don’t need one specific day to love.
But maybe we need reminders to practice it.
So single or partnered, I will celebrate love today.
I will wear my favourite dress.
Light the candles.
Open the wine.
Call the people who matter.
Say the soft things out loud.
So yeah, my advice is: Buy the flowers.
Make the reservation.
Dance slowly in the kitchen with no music.
Not because the calendar says so.
But because kindness must be practiced.
And I believe in love:
because I know what happens when it’s missing.
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