Thoughts on Valentine's Day

I just want to take a second to share my two cents on valentine's day.  I absolutely love the holiday and a huge part of that comes from growing up in a house that always went above and beyond to celebrate holidays.  What I don't love, is the pressure I put on myself and my husband on holidays and birthdays to make the day perfect.  And with that pressure, usually comes some sort of tears. Like a normal, healthy, emotional sound person.


Honesty hour.  Last year, Valentine's Day was incredibly hard.  Ryan and I were struggling to find a healthy balance of school/work/personal time.  I had just moved to Washington DC the month before and Ryan was halfway through his LLM program while completing an externship.  And I was incredibly depressed (but did not realize at the time how bad it was).  For some very unfortunate reason, that came to a head literally on the metro ride on the way to our dinner date to celebrate.  It was a real special one (yup).  And the icing on top of the cake was definitely the fact that while we heatedly talked on the metro platform, a mouse was enjoying a meal right next to us. 

So, this year, I just wanted to spend an evening celebrating our happiness.  In the past year, I have come to love where we live.  We have found the balance between work and home life.  (And neither of us our students...FINALLY).  We spoiled each other with treats during the day and had planned to go to our favorite local pizza place and a movie afterwards.  In true Ryan and Megan fashion, after a few champagne cocktails at dinner we decided to ditch the movie and lay in bed eating the cookie cake Ryan had sent that day and watch TV.  (Side note: while the cookie cake is a great idea in theory as opposed to flowers--if you have no control around food, do not ask your husband to send you one)!

My favorite part of the date was obviously every part because I am a big ball of cheese.  But, if I had to pick one moment, it was definitely when Ryan was reading my card.  A couple of weeks ago I bought him ice cream...and then ate it (see what I meant about self control?) and he was hilariously unhappy.  So in the card, I mentioned that I loved his patience when I did things like eat his ice cream...he then said that I still hadn't gotten him any as he read the card.  WELL total win for me.  The P.S. of the card read "check the freezer" and he couldn't believe it.  That was the moment he then told me that I "won" Valentine's Day.  (That is not what the holiday is about--but I was proud of myself for making him so incredibly happy).

Incredibly long story short, everyday of my life in the past 5 years has been about showing and sharing love with Ryan.  And I will always take advantage of a day to show just a little more love than normal.  And I am slowly working on reducing some of that holiday pressure.


MS

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