to my shoelaces

one - valentine's

If you're such a saint, such a hero, such an angel of love, then tell me, how are you still left all by yourself on a day like this?

It was Valentine's Day. A shitty day with a shitty name only invented to play directly into the hands of those who sold roses and candy and plastic stuff shaped like hearts, colored in pink, red or other funky colors that were supposed to catch your eyes. February 14th had never been among my favorite days of the year. In fact, I didn't actually care about it. It had never touched me, I had never been affected or prompted by any social pressure to buy a gift for anyone. I was always a loner. School looked very dull, and I wasn't in greedy or giddy anticipation of what came after school, presuming that it could possibly only either be abominably worse or exceedingly better than what I had faced so far - one of the extremes, which one I didn't know, but my pessimism led me to assume it was going to be at least a little worse than life currently. All I knew was that I wanted to get out of this room I was in and  find a space to find comfort in - whether that was on my own or with somebody else didn't matter much to me. I was always uncomfortable. What I always imagined was that maybe it'd become better if I had a boyfriend to love me, to kiss me and to hug me. Someone to go to the cinema and to hold hands with. Somebody to love. Somebody I could wrap my arm around when everything became quiet on the way home, late at night or early in the morning. I never left the house before 7 am or after 8 pm. It was just too risky for me, as someone who gave away that they were uncomfortable by the first, ever so hasty and brief glance you could shoot at them. I dreamed of someone tall and strong, able to convey to others not to mess with me. Someone who wasn't an addition, but a completion of my own person. Someone who could bear it all. Someone nonexistent - for all I knew - that was.

The boys at school all looked pretty handsome. Some more, some less, I could imagine to fall in love with any of them. I could imagine their softness when it came to the light of day, I could imagine their sweetness uncovering itself; like the core of the rose when you picked off its petals one by one. I could imagine how strong they would possibly become if someone pissed me off and they noticed or knew. Every boy, I had long ago noticed, had his specific qualities - some were good thinkers, others were not so good at thinking or speaking, but were exceedingly good at throwing smaller or bigger balls into baskets or at jumping over a pole vault bar that was put into a random place for them to jump over. I was good at none of the sporty stuff and I also never actively, intentionally  showed my other qualities in class or in conversation. The only time I ever talked was when I needed to put any guy in his place for being intolerant or racist or offending, homophobic. Said boys always lost at least ten of the imaginary points I had counted up for each of them on my personal attractiveness-scale. Things I considered in this were their looks, the way they spoke, what they spoke, the way they behaved and my presumed attractiveness from their point of view. Someone who I could imagine might find me pretty was automatically more attractive than someone who never looked at me.

I had it all figured out in my head: who was possibly going to be my boyfriend and who was not. I had all these things figured out - possible nicknames, possible activities we could enjoy together, movies we could watch, music we could listen to. I often even imagined that someone might remember a specific single I put on while we hugged each other, a single they would forever remember as "Violet's single we would always listen to in her room while looking into each other's eyes, telling us how much we loved each other", but who that someone was going to be was up for debate. I, however, was on the hunt. I was looking and looking and looking all around the place for hints, for looks, for glimpses of glances, for slivers of smiles, for a wave of a hand that might invite me to hold it. But nothing occurred. Eventually, every girl had a boyfriend and the people who tolerated me sitting next to them all had someone they rather sat next to, whom they would actually, actively and intentionally choose to have as a seatmate during class. Classes could cause you to perceive extreme, cruel boredom from time to time. For the larger part of the day, I was busy pretending I did not hear anybody and that nobody saw or perceived me. If I ever did say something in class, I couldn't stop shaking for the rest of the lesson. Still, sometimes I said something since I was very aware that I needed good grades to eventually pass this test called life. Sometimes, grades felt like they weren't just relevant in school, but also in life itself. As if they solely existed for the purpose of driving you mad. And if you didn't get good grades, the downward spiral only got a cruel kick-start: bad grades, can't pass school, can't get into a good high school, can't get into uni, and so on. In the end, you died.

It all felt so pointless, though. It all always felt as if it wasn't even planning on allowing to bid the chance for a bright future of possibilities and joy. I often felt this lack of joy destroying me from the inside out with all its power, for the absence of joy weighs heavier than the presence of a mere negative emotion. If you're angry, at least you know that there's a driving force on the inside causing you to feel and to do things. If you solely lack joy or liveliness, that is a whole other story of woe. Maybe woe depended on the vanishing of emotions to make room for it. School made this a possibility everyday.