I've never been so alone, and I've never been so alive

That's the closing lyric to Third Eye Blind's "Motorcycle Drive-By" (this may become a theme), but I thought it an appropriate title to this post, as I look at my tenth consecutive Valentine's Day on my own. Not that I've been single that whole time (though granted, significant portions of it), it's just that a few have fallen at weird times in some relationships, far too early in others (less than a week hardly qualifies for long stem roses), and just plain missed them entirely... but whatever...

Now, this isn't going to be some angry rant against the supposed holiday. There are plenty of good things about Valentine's Day, not the least of which being that it forces otherwise emotionally distant guys to man up and make some, albeit forced, romantic gesture towards the woman in their life. And while they will pretend to hate it, that can't be all bad, can it?

Anyway, the reason I opened with the title I did was that while I have spent an inordinate number of Valentine's Days without anyone expecting much of me, I have no real issues with it. I am, after all, basically a loner at heart. While I love my friends and family, sometimes I want nothing more than to be on my own. It makes me happy. When I feel obliged to spend time with people for no reason other than I am supposed to, it annoys me, and I don't tend to hide that annoyance well. Maybe it's the only child thing... who knows. But I don't think it really has much impact on why I've been single for so many of these Hallmark Holidays. I just thought it needed prefacing that I'm not complaining, or depressed or anything because of it. In fact, it's mostly my own doing.

It's not so much as I push people away... it's that I see extremely little point in spending much time on a relationship that I know isn't going to go anywhere. In fact, I'll often even make snap judgements upon meeting people and decide on supposed fatal flaws that I can see ending things before I'll have so much as asked her out... so I don't even bother to ask.

Or there's the other side, where I'll assume that there's no way that someone like that would have any interest in me....

I'll get over you and you'll wonder
Who I am

Often they'll never have any idea I cared. Not that I ever tried to express it.

Alternately, I have been known to completely read situations wrong. My list of inter-gender stupidity is long as distinguished, and I'm not going to get into it here, but suffice to say, it's almost comical. I can generally read people like a book... until I care about what I'm looking for, or think I'm seeing. At which point, I invariably read everything completely and totally wrong.... only later seeing that I completely blew something I was looking for without even realizing it, or equally thinking, against better judgement, that things were going somewhere, when in fact they were not...

And I'm sleeping on the couch
When I came to visit you
That's when I knew
That I could never have you
I knew that before you did
Still I'm the one who's stupid

I actually didn't catch the irony of posting with this particular song's lyrics as a theme until just now... the first time I actually had the song's theme pointed out to me was actually by a girl I was dating, as we sat on the roof of her car at some anonymous rest stop on the 401.

The irony, of course, being that we never really celebrated a Valentine's Day as a couple.

And so the self-analysis of my subconscious begins........... how can I possibly expect someone else to put up with me when I can't even begin to figure out the tricks my own mind is playing on me? Meh. Not really an issue, I guess.

PS: Sorry, I didn't mean for that to be quite the downer I get from re-reading it... but I can't figure out a funny or sunshine-and-lollipops way to explain what I'm getting at. Oh well.