I got one hand steady on the wheel and one hand's tremblin' over my heart.

Today is Valentine's Day, and it's the day I hate most every year.

I hate Valentine's Day. On the surface, it seems like a sweet idea, a special day to tell your sweetheart that you love them. When you're a kid, Valentine's Day is all about the heart-shaped box of candy from your parents, and the class party. I remember making the Valentine’s mailboxes at school every year. I always liked covering an old shoe box or a paper bag in handmade pink and red hearts and uneven paper doilies. Then on the day of the Valentine’s party, everyone would walk around and drop their store-bought Valentine’s into each other’s boxes. There was no surprise; you knew you would give one to everyone in your class, and that everyone would give you one. Even the people you didn’t like. It was like some weird, forced, social positive reinforcement.

And don’t even get me started on what happens when you like a boy and he doesn’t like you back, or vice versa. It’s just creepy and a little degrading.

Every year since 1984, when I was 11 ½, something wretched has always happened on Valentine's Day, plus or minus a couple of days:

my parents announce their divorce
starting my period
chicken pox
apartment fire
jail
surgery
tornado
strep
surgery complications
fights with now-exes

This is by no means an all-inclusive list, and some of these overlap. 2001 was destined to finally break the cycle with the birth of my elder son, but even that was tempered by the above-listed tornado. Last year was going to be hard—the first VDay without DH since 1992—so Hammer came to visit and join me for Mardi Gras in Mobile. Of course I blew two cervical discs again, leaving me in horrific misery for weeks.

This year, it's a two-day stomach virus and ice storm. In Atlanta.

Valentine's Day Curse? Check!

I know it's a Hallmark Holiday, but dammit! I would like to have just one good Valentine's Day in my lifetime. And it's not that there's never been a good day in those years—I have been the recipient of many cards and candies and roses and even my awesome Wonder Woman high-tops. It's just that every single year has been hampered by some other crazy that detracts from it.

I know, I know: the specialness of the day is artificial; there's no reason not to show your beloveds every other day of the year how much you love them. I try my best to do that anyway. In fact, I think it's cruel and stupid to limit that to an overly-decorated, inconvenient day that makes one group feel really special while making another feel somehow emotionally and socially inferior because they don't have someone else to buy them some over-priced, gaudy cardstock that tells them they're awesome.

Part of me does miss having even the hint of someone special this year (and last), but I also have evidence to how many years having someone meant very little. At least with someone else to help shoulder the burden, the chaos feels much more manageable. I hate not having a safety net when I know some bullshit will be dropped on me during this week.

There's no real way to plan for it, in part because it's always something different and almost always totally out of my control. If I retreat in advance, put myself into a quiet, padded box, and sit quietly while the week passes, the world would still be going on around me. There would be consequence to my self-imposed exile. If I take it on full force and plan something amazing to distract me, some chaos would still randomly appear to break all my big plans. (See above.)

I don't even know what I feel about it anymore. I'm somehow a little distanced from the anger and loathing and anxiety and resignation, looking at it all from arms-length while I sigh, knowing it's all about to happen but refusing to care about it until it does. It's one of the few things I can emotionally compartmentalize, though I'm quite adept at opening the box and checking the compartments' contents from time to time. Like checking your phone to see if your ex has called.

There is always good, too. Max's birthday was yesterday, so we celebrated with a Funfetti cake and fresh snowcream after a snowball fight. When the ice melts enough to get our car off our street, we'll get out into the world and see what we've missed for the last few days. (I'd be afraid to drive had the Curse not already hit this year.)

The List of Vexes is also a series of reminders of the changes that can occur when I least expect it, of how the bad things can seem so horrible but then lead to something really wonderful that comes as some kind of amend for the wrong. It's also a subtle reminder of the people I miss this year, of the ones I expected to be here to help carrying this year's burden.

So to everyone who matters to my heart, whether or not you're with me this year or any other, Happy Valentine's Day. I love you. You know this.