When I was 11, I found the repeat button on my stereo system. Dave Matthews' "Before These Crowded Streets" was spinning around in the CD player and before long, track number eight, "Crush," was looping sweet sounds in and out of my ears for hours on end. There's a part in that song—"Let's go drive 'till morning comes, and watch the sunrise and fill our souls up"—that blew me away the first time I heard it. Those words were so real I could almost taste them. It was like Dave was talking to me, telling me what love was going to be like.
I listened to that song over and over, but I never got tired of it. "Crush" was a secret world that I created for myself; no matter what was going on in my life, all I had to do was turn on that song and I had love. Things sneak up on me like that—certain music, movies, books, or art—and suddenly my heart begins to race, my head vaporizes, and I'm out of this world. It happened to me when I watched the movie "Garden State." I swear I felt an electric pulse go through my body when Natalie Portman and Zach Braff kissed on a bulldozer in the rain. I had to immediately watch the movie again just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.
And people—people. They can make my senses go haywire and cause all the atoms in my body to explode into transcendental sublime. I remember my first kiss. It was on a playground at night the summer before my freshman year of high school. He and I were underneath this green slide shaped like a dragon. My face was coated in his saliva and I must have had a handful of wood chips in my shorts from crawling under the slide, but I was definitely swooning well into the following week. And then there was the first time I kissed a girl. Boom! Fireworks! When she left, I sat at one of the picnic tables outside Coleman Hall for 45 minutes staring at the stars. You're not going to believe me, but the first time I kissed someone I thought I really loved, the sun was rising while "Crush" was playing on her iTunes.
The only relationship I've ever been in started on Valentine's Day. He left a rose and a card in my locker on the Friday before February break started. We dated for six months before he went off to college. I felt like the two of us could be in a crowd of thousands and we'd be the only ones there. I have a friend who makes me feel that way too. Despite all we've been through over the past four years, there are times when we laugh at a frequency that only we can audibly detect, and times when we say more with a hug than we ever could with our mouths.
Valentine's Day is my mother's favorite holiday. When I asked her why, she said it's because Valentine's Day is the only day of the year set aside specifically to recognize love. All the things I've been talking about—songs and movies, kisses, love affairs, high school sweethearts, and best friends—are only a tiny fraction of the love I've experienced in my short 21 years on this planet. It would be impossible to recount every moment that my soul has been electrified by the beauty that surrounds me everywhere I go. I suppose, when you get right down to it, I'm a total romantic. I love love. I hardly ever experience it the way I think I'm supposed to—you know, art history major meets economics major and then marriage and a white picket fence, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I celebrate any connection that uplifts the spirit. I just worry, sometimes, that we don't take the time to recognize love in all of its wondrous iterations, and that there are people who feel frustrated, lonely, doomed, or disheartened because of it.
So, if you were planning on celebrating "Singles Awareness Day" tomorrow, I would encourage you to broaden your horizons. Valentine's Day belongs to everyone, not just the people who are in relationships. Every human being has a tremendous capacity for love, and tomorrow is the day to celebrate that fact. If you can't think of anything other than a monogamous relationship to represent the way that love manifests itself in this world, you need to rewire your thinking. When you wake up tomorrow, open your heart. Your mind will follow.