the legend of St. Valentine

Once I received beautifully gold patterned and rimmed drinking glasses on a random Thursday night; just because. The gesture dwarfed anything I have ever experienced on the designated day of St. Valentine and haunts me on a daily basis.

On this day of recognizing contrived events in the fiction of Geoffrey Chaucer, I sit going through charts, emails, schedules, portfolios, and news articles after a day of sitting with patients: the first of whom was actively miscarrying her second child; her body rejecting the fruit of love. The rest came in one at a time with various complaints of depression, anxiety, obesity, fatigue, and pain; prolonged soliloquies of human suffering.

I walked out of clinic and drove to my apartment, past all the restaurants full of young and old lovers celebrating each other and their sparkling moments together. People often comment their amazement to me that I remain single; as if my academic pedigree culminating in MD with my private pilot certificate, ski skills, extensive travel history, lack of debt, and family associations were the desired dating résumé. I am starting to think, rather, they are my biggest liability. Who wants the always busy-middle-of-the-class-introverted-Jane-Austen-Reading-afraid-of-commitment-terrible-cook-early-morning-running girl? Precious few. And the ones who sometimes hang around I quickly scare off with my habit of ironing the just-cleaned sheets before making the bed.

In a professional world that requires I be “nice” and a culture pushing feminism, I find myself evermore on the fringes unwilling to take on any stereotype that currently exists which plunges me further into singleness seeking solace on my running trials, freshly powdered down hill slopes, or piloting the Cessna 172. Am I really that intimidating, or unattractive or obtuse or undesired?  Maybe so, but what strikes me, of all the February 14’ths that have come before, this legend of a St. Valentine subverts the value of humanity; reducing it to candies and flowers.