Valentine Day

I self-identify as an urban monk, a high-functioning hermit living in the city.  It's not that I hate people, it's just that I prefer not to be with them all the time, even as I live in their very midst.  It's a strange and not unchallenging position to take, but one with which I've grown quite familiar and comfortable.   

There are many of us, some more introverted than others, some more misanthropic than others, who've chosen to live alone for one reason or another, removed from family, spouse and children, with few friends and even those generally kept at arm's length.  And there are others who've had a life of solitude choose them, sometimes to their complete surprise.

It's well known that holidays, especially the holidays, are hard on single people, especially those who haven't made up their minds to deliberately be alone. But for very different reasons, it's also hard on those of us who have made that decision and if I may be so bold as to speak for the other urban monks and inner-city hermits, it's not the holidays that are hard - it's the expectations of other people that are so difficult to tolerate.

It all starts around Thanksgiving, where the so-called normal people, we'll call them the "normies," assume that if you aren't attending some sort of familial feast like they are, you're missing out on something. Now while many of us feel that a four-day weekend is reason enough to celebrate, and four days in solitude off from work and away from others is the best way to celebrate, the normies reaction is to either display a spectrum of emotions ranging from pity to grief, or worse, feel a need to intervene and invite you to their familial feast out of pity, putting you in the awkward position of either turning down their offer and appearing ungrateful or just plain rude, or going to a dinner that you don't really want to go to and frankly, they'd really prefer for you not to attend.  So we loners just try to keep a low profile, avoiding discussions of what we are or aren't doing for the holiday, and hope no one discovers the truth of the matter.

It gets worse at Christmas, except you're less likely to get invitations to come join the normie festivities.  But if you're not celebrating Christmas with friends and family in the way that the normies expect, their reaction is just as likely to include contempt and anger as it is to range between pity and grief.  And while you just want to be left alone, they assume that there must be something malignant about you and your preference, and I  know many people who've lied about their Christmas plans and experiences, not out of shame or guilt, but just to avoid the normie's self-centered judgement.

And on New Year's Eve, if you aren't planning to have either 1) the biggest, most extravagant night of your life, or 2) an intimate evening with a loved one, you are missing out on the very meaning of existence.  And on New Year's Eve, the normie reaction to you just being yourself is particularly hard to predict: you might get the dreaded awkward invitation to their own planned bacchanalia, or you might get that uncomfortable expression of sorrow or pity ("it must suck being you"), or you might get a hostile, xenophobic  reaction ("oh, I suppose you're just too cool for NYE?" or "I guess our traditions just aren't good enough for you, amirite?").  The only advantage of New Year's Eve is that it's fairly easy to avoid the normies in the week between Christmas and New Year's, so there's that.

Then finally, we get tonight.  Valentine's Day.  The last of the dreaded cavalcade of holidays.   But here, we have two good defenses at our disposal - first, by now the normie's expectations have been tempered and they no longer are even expecting us to have plans, romantic or otherwise, and second, they all want to leave work early for last-minute shopping and other preparations and are actually somewhat grateful to have someone else to pick up the slack in their absence. 

And third, based on what I've seen, no one really has as much fun on Valentine's evening as they had hoped.  There's always some degree of disappointment and unmet expectations.  To one person, the gesture just wasn't big enough, and to the other, the reward might not have seemed commensurate with their effort.  And I hate to break it to the ladies, but I don't know a single, solitary man who wouldn't really prefer, when he's really being honest, that the whole holiday just didn't exist, no matter how much he may or may not love his partner.  But for the normies, the backlash of not making some effort to rise to the holiday's demands is far worse than the the actual ritual, so flowers and cards are purchased, dinner reservations made, and so on and so forth.

For urban monks, Valentine's Day is a sort of smug validation of our choices - while we've had to suffer the normies' condensation and pity and sometimes even hostility for our choices, we finally get our revenge and get to watch them suffer the unfulfilling consequences of theirs.