Every year, corporations use commercials, billboards, Facebook ads and any other method available, in order to sell you guilt about being a shitty partner to your significant other. Everything from overpriced jewelry, to candy and stuffed animals, price-surged to maximize guilt and profits. Add that to the fact that Valentine’s Day is my son’s birthday, and what you get, is a really good math problem that results in "fuck this day to death." So, here we go...
I’m fucking terrible at romance. I’m not good at buying gifts, I haven’t bought a card in fucking years, and I honestly don’t know when the last time I bought one was. Sure, I tell the people I love that I love them, and of course I buy people I’m contractually obligated to gifts, but when it comes down to the come down, it’s hard as fuck to figure out what to get. My wife just likes preserved dead stuff and human teeth and my girlfriend just likes Skyrim and Zelda. Literally, none of the things that stores have during this "holiday" are useful or fitting for what the women I love want to receive as gifts. Add to that the fact that I just spent more money than I have on presents a month ago and...well...I’m very ,very fucked.
I spend extra money so that I don’t see ads on YouTube, I avoid over-the-air, regular television and I (mostly) don’t look at Facebook anymore—all because I fucking hate ads. The easiest way to say why, is I’m very aware the influence mind control has over people and how they feel. I have a bipolar disorder and my mind can’t take being told it isn’t good enough, just because my TV doesn’t have enough Ps or Ks. Or, maybe I’m a piece of shit, because I either can’t afford fancy jewelry or I just lack the desire to burn good money on rocks from the ground that don’t explode (I’m not talking about you, Uranium). The only purpose for advertising is to give you an inferiority complex through subtle and effective mind control. So, of course this time of year has more ads for heart-shaped candy than antidepressants. Fuck this shit, am I right?
As anyone with a kid knows, Christmas is like a giant buttfuck at a prison orgy. Literally everything a 13-year-old kid wants opens up at around $100—which is a lot of damn money when you make $14 an hour. I just recently had to fill up the bottom of a tree and some weird, oversized socks with stuff, and now, I have to get this ungrateful brat more shit? You can sometimes get around Valentine’s Day with the ladies, by pretending to be on some moral high ground about manufactured holidays—but, that shit doesn’t fly with your kids on their birthday...it just doesn’t. At least, this year, I was smart and knew I should avoid buying at least a couple things at Christmas, so that I’d have some shit on deck for my kid’s birthday. By the way, if you ever grow up and want to read dad’s writing, I love you, son—even though you’re a greedy, ungrateful, little fuck.
I really hate people, which is a common affliction for folks to have these days. I do not like going shopping and I really do not like doing it at busy stores. Dealing with mental illness, for me, means that I go to work—and that’s about it. Just doing that every day drains me physically and emotionally, to the extent that coming home to a family who wants to talk to me is too much, let alone going shopping for gifts. I don’t even go out much to pursue my own hobbies or other interests. I just want to spend every minute I’m not at work emotionally preparing myself to go back to work.
Anymore, most people in my age range are pretty indifferent to corporate holidays. But, I think when you’re in a romantic relationship, all parties involved put on a show to pretend like this shit is important to them—I’m not even really sure why. It’s probably tradition. Culturally, we as a people need tradition; we don’t want it—we need it. So, I think a lot of things we do are just subconsciously done to retain tradition. It’s also probably the reason all these fucking racists are so emboldened by our current president. We want things to stay the same, and we want to be able to mark the passage of time by how the same things stay. Well, things are always changing and maybe it’s time we get rid of racists, sexists, bigots and Valentine’s Day.
