Stupid Cupid

I have officially come to the decision that I am a complete and utter idiot. Either that or I am a magnet for pain.

Ever since I was a little girl, holidays have been an intricate and anxiously awaited part of my life. Every year, my my grandmother would have me or my grandfather climb up into the attic with all it's distant memories and familiar smells to retrieve a box for the upcoming holiday. Easter had painted egg wall hangings and obnoxiously colored wicker baskets with leftover plastic grass; Christmas gave way to the giant plastic manager scene and a cardboard fireplace from the 70's that was riddled with thumbtack holes from "hanging the stockings gently with care" for decades. 

And then there was Valentine's Day.

Red,white and pink overtook the house for a week before til the day after. Hearts and lace and Victorian Scripted "I love you"'s everywhere. My grandfather would proudly have flowers delivered to our house for my Nan and waiting for the florist van to pull up for her was as exciting as waiting for Christmas Eve to give birth to early Christmas morning. Every year she acted as surprised and thankful as she probably genuinely was the first time he did it for her. My grandparents set the stage for how I was to view holidays for the rest of my life.

Which is why I blame them entirely for my yearly heartache and disappointments in these stupid time honored celebration of certain days. I grew into womanhood with the expectation woven throughout my being that someday there would be my loving husband, on Christmas and my birthday and Valentine's Day, our anniversary and Mother's Day, dutifully hearing my wishes and desires throughout the year and lovingly allowing me to cross each and every one off my mental list over time. To me, the love of a man towards his wife was more than just providing a shelter and utilities for his family, it was going the extra mile to do things he didn't necessarily want to do or enjoy because in the end, her smile and her feeling valued above all other women( if even for a moment during a holiday) was reflected in his smile and it bonded them together. Well, I got news for you. 
It's all hooey.
This is what I've learned of holidays and their correlation to love since 1999.

1. No man innately wants to do romantic things for his woman.It is purely a ruse- a type of primal hunting,if you will-  to shoot down the female of his choosing so he can drag her off and say he was man enough to get her. He was just that good-that romantic- that she couldn't help herself. Ladies, once he has you...it's over. Your romantic dreams will now have to be scaled down tremendously from once dreaming of candlelit dinners and hotel getaways to settling for lukewarm meals you coked and compromising on a movie/tv program that you don't mind and he loves.
2. "Just Because" gifts exist just because you watched a stupid romance comedy and some underpaid script writer gave the heroine in the film that moment that she didn't actually deserve, and now you in real life are hooked on having that same moment, sans script writer. Good luck with that.
3. Holidays are rooted in evil. No matter how you spin it, when you break down the word you get "holy" and "days". I fully believe that you are responsible for what you know and so now, thanks to this new-found knowledge, there is a whole lot of guilt and inner turmoil for me. I was reared in the joys of celebrating holidays and now I discover that it was all wrong. I have learned that as a Christian there are 7 Holidays in the Bible that God only ever mentioned to be celebrated and observed, none of which include a tree or wall hangings or gift giving. In case you were curious these holidays are :

• Passover
•  First and Last Day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread
• The Day of Pentecost
• The Feast of Trumpets
•   The Day of Atonement
• The Feast of Tabernacles (The Feast of Booths)
• The Great Last Day

I never EVER want to downplay or ignore the importance of celebrating the days that I as a Christian am even allowed/expected to keep observed.But how am I supposed to do that so easily when I wasn't taught this and in fact was taught completely backwards?And on top of that, I am now rearing my children the same way, but confusing the heck out of them because of my new knowledge and being torn between what I know to be right and the things I was taught to hold dear. So thank you Pop,Nan and Mom...for instilling in me a love of generational misinformation and supposedly evil doing.

Look, this little corner of the electrical universe was never meant to just be a daily or close to daily tirade about woe is me and how miserable am I. Truth be told, I do actually have good days. I do laugh-believe it or not I have a pretty intense belly laugh that has caused quite a few headaches. I find beauty in things around, hence the photography page on here that I'm working on. It's just that i also have had an awful lot of really bad and painful things to go through in my life., and when it gets to the point where you have a hard time remembering the days with a smile because the bad days outnumber them or you miss them so much you wanna cry, you need to vent somewhere. Since I have no "right there in front of me" tangible friends that I cry with or on, I blog. I used to be such an encourager and I've always been a great listener. But now, now it's my season for needing to be listened to and needing an encourager. I'm in a lot of pain. I get angry and frustrated at my life and how it twists and turns, and rarely in my favor anymore. I'm angry that there seems to be no end in sight to all the pain and bad and that the people I love around me are going through their own pain and bad and I can't ease it or make it stop.
     This blog was meant to be a safe place to vent and to find the 3 things that remain...Faith,Hope and Love....because they are the only 3 that ever do. Even when your faith feels like it's gone, you know it isn't if you are able to keep hoping and finding away to open your eyes and get out of bed. Heck, there have been days where my act of faith was to open my swollen tear filled eyes in the morning and just stare. It was like my hearts little act of defiance against just wanting to be dead. Faith and hope shall always remain. Love, well the world's idea of love comes and goes. But true Love always remains, never changes, and will always always continue.....because God is Love.
Hey, i actually ended on a good note!