Thank you for this post. I think you've hit a lot of areas that people forget when they're up on their soap boxes telling us we have to do things their way.
As a kid, I loved Valentine's day. Not in a romantic way, but as an extra way of showing the people around me I loved them. (Parents, grandparents, siblings, friends.) Of course, I did the same thing every holiday and days that weren't even holidays.
As an adult, I grew to dread and fear Valentine's day because of what it represented. Too many people think Valentine's Day = SEX, and that's just the way my abusive husband thought.
For the 13 years that I was with him, it was the most horrible day of the year for me. That, and my birthday, because celebrating for him meant forcing me to have sex without my consent (I stopped giving consent long before I was able to get away from him because of the abusiveness.)
Not everyone enjoys the holiday or has fond memories of it. For people to tell us there's something wrong with us for not feeling all warm and fuzzy about it is ludicrous.
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Date: 2010-02-14 07:35 am (UTC)As a kid, I loved Valentine's day. Not in a romantic way, but as an extra way of showing the people around me I loved them. (Parents, grandparents, siblings, friends.) Of course, I did the same thing every holiday and days that weren't even holidays.
As an adult, I grew to dread and fear Valentine's day because of what it represented. Too many people think Valentine's Day = SEX, and that's just the way my abusive husband thought.
For the 13 years that I was with him, it was the most horrible day of the year for me. That, and my birthday, because celebrating for him meant forcing me to have sex without my consent (I stopped giving consent long before I was able to get away from him because of the abusiveness.)
Not everyone enjoys the holiday or has fond memories of it. For people to tell us there's something wrong with us for not feeling all warm and fuzzy about it is ludicrous.