What is this feeling?

It's not sudden, but it is new, and I am savoring it.

Next week is Valentine's Day.

And I'm okay with that.

This is nothing less than a sea change in my perception of the holiday. In the past, a post on Valentine's Day would involve withering social commentary on the degredation of relationship, the shallow simperings of what our culture calls romance, and the undue pressures on single people to believe that they are less than okay on their own.

What has changed? Several things, but mostly it's that I've decided to live honestly. It's amazing how many things cease to be problems when you're just honest with yourself about their existence and stop trying to live up to some wacked ideal you made up.

In the past, I did feel on some level (though I didn't acknowledge this honestly to myself until a few months ago) that I was failing by not living up to the American/Family/Church/Whoever's Dream of marriage and children. I got mad at other people, mad at myself, mad at Valentine's Day, etc. A friend of mine once told me that anger is a masking emotion--that when you're angry, you should stop and examine what's really going on. Well, fear of failure on the level I was experiencing it (i.e. failure as anything ever going anything other than how I thought it should) is a pretty big thing to mask, so no wonder there was a lot of anger.

Now that I'm being honest about what I was hiding, I am able to address it and to bring all the voices in my head into a steady coexistence. It goes something like this:

Voice #1: I'm a failure for not dating.
Voice #2: No, I'm not. That's stupid sentimental trash. In fact, I'm actually a failure for feeling like a failure.
Voice #3: I'm afraid of commitment.
Voice #1: No guys like me.
Voice #2: Who needs them?
Voice #3: All kinds of guys like me. And if I were dating any of them, there would probably be temptations to exclude other people, and also probably a lot of talking about The Relationship. As it is, any and all of my guy friends and I can have detailed conversations about the relational complications on, say, The Office or Smallville.
Voice #1: I guess I do like that better.
Voice #2: You know what I like? Episodes without Lana angst.
Voice #3: Oh, I so know what you're talking about....

And in such a way is mystical oneness achieved.

I like being honest with me.