Ah, Valentine’s Day. V-day. Love and stuff. Candy hearts, flowers, chocolates, chubby winged babies, the gist.
I wasn’t fortunate enough to be struck by Cupid’s arrow this year, or any other year for that matter. I’ve been single for almost five years now. However, some of you will be lucky enough to share this special day with a loved one or will even receive a really expensive rock that you’ll put on your finger and cherish until you inevitably lose it. Hey, I’m not judging. Congratulations are actually in order. I just have one question… How did you do it?
I don’t live under a rock like some common flower-trousered starfish. I am fully aware that Harding has a reputation for churning out a large number of marriages. This is your life and you can do whatever you want; I’m just genuinely curious. If you have gotten engaged already or are seriously dating, how did you manage to find that special someone? You’re taking the next big step in this grand adventure we call life, and I can’t even get a boy to talk to me.
I have not been asked on one date since I’ve been a student at Harding. Not a single one. Of course, I, as well as all other women, are fully capable and allowed to make the first move. I’ve just had really bad experiences doing so in the past, so that was definitely out of the question for me. Sure, this has allowed me to focus on my studies and my work, and I’ve had the opportunity to really discover who I am as a person and what I value in life, but it seriously bothers me that I’m somehow too intimidating or unappealing for just one person to show at least a sliver of interest in me.
I’m not sure if this is a property of college students in general or just the ones that go to Harding, but it seems like the dating process is completely warped and unlike anything you’d see in real life. Here’s how the process works as I, as only an observant wallflower, see it:
You make eyes at someone from across the classroom. You message them on Facebook, asking a question about a homework assignment that you already know the answer to. After striking up a conversation about sushi or your views on the refugee crisis, you express that you find Facebook messenger annoying and give them your number. You continue conversation until you use that same homework assignment as an excuse to study together in the library. You go to the library with them, but after finding yourselves distracted and hungry, you shirk your schoolwork to go grab Sonic. At this point, you share your disinterest for the gen-ed you’re taking together, your entire life story and the fact that you’re really tired of being single. You decide to be boyfriend-and-girlfriend, steady dates, official. And all of this takes place during the span of a singular weekend.
I’m not against finding love. I’m not against marriage. I’m actually looking forward to being in a committed relationship someday, and I think I’m ready for that to happen. But what I am against is this completely idiotic pattern of dating that has left me without a Valentine for the fourth year of being at a school famous for relationships and marriages.
Is there a way that I can circumvent this ludicrous process? Am I just old-fashioned? Or am I sentenced to a life of cats and daytime television? Am I and all the other single people actually the norm? Should we form a union and rise against the unfair stigma imposed on us by the mainstream? Or are we just failed social experiments that aren’t quite good enough to be packaged, wrapped and distributed to the world from the Harding Marriage Machine?
Regardless, if you need me on Tuesday of next week, I’ll be in bed eating chocolate and watching The Vow by myself.
