What Valentine’s feel like this year.

Today, on Valentine’s Day, I woke up not even thinking about writing anything.

Just like any other day, I got up, went for a jog, worked out, had my blessed morning juice, and I felt freaking awesome.

But this year, something feels different—I feel different, and my priorities and expectations are different.

I am different.

I have always struggled with labeling things and defining them. Having some OCPD traits (obsessive compulsive personality disorder), I like to define and rationalize things, concepts, and numbering.

One of the things that I wanted to label in my life was whether I was a Valentine’s Day person, whether I liked gifts and celebrations, or whether I thought it was too commercial. But 2020 taught me a lot. I learned that it is okay to not have preset rules and concepts, it is okay if I change my mind sometimes, and it is okay if my feelings, ideas, and thoughts are not static and defined all the time.

This year, my celebration on this day will be one about life, health, self-love, loving my significant other, and appreciating every human being I know and care for on this earth.

This year, I want to embrace my womanhood, celebrate women who are succeeding, multitasking, loving, being loved by their significant other, and most importantly, I want to celebrate the most beautiful trend I went for this year (although I’m not a fan of trends, and I don’t like to comply): the trend of self-acceptance, loving my mind, body, and myself just the way I am—no conditions, no strings attached.

This year, I want to appreciate love as a concept and celebrate it on every possible aspect. I want to love love; I want to choose love; I want to live love; I want to be love.

This year, I will not expect gifts and plans. I will not put a tremendous effort to get the perfect gift, to make the perfect plan, to be the perfect partner.

I will not be perfect for one day.

This year, I will just be—and let others be. I will exist and let others exist. I will celebrate love as I have experienced it through the past year and a half with an economic crisis, a massive blast in the heart of my capital city, Beirut, and a global pandemic that made basic human connections a taboo.

I will celebrate love in being there for people, making sure they got home safely, checking in, and supporting them even if it doesn’t serve me.

I will celebrate love in accepting the bad days and appreciating the little things and the details.

I will celebrate love in tiny, cute love notes, coexistence in silence, and the warm, long embrace that slowly erases a bad day.

This year, I am celebrating true love in a relationship, a friendship, a career, myself, a hobby, nature, God—just love, in all its possible ways, views, and definitions.

May these words be a warm embrace to anyone needing them right now. And to everyone struggling with love and its ways, always remember the good parts, appreciate them, accept what cannot be changed, and change what cannot be accepted.

A relationship with oneself, with a life partner, with a friend, with nature, with God, and whatnot is a dynamic process. It is a constantly changing entity that evolves as the two parties in it evolve and change.

With this mindset and acceptance of people, places, and situations changing, maintaining a strong base and a scaffolding between two people, even if the outside paint and glass are changing, will make them face together any storms, explosions, hurricanes, or earthquakes that may come their way.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s everyone!

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