Un-love stories

Valentine's Day brings out the best and the worst in people when it comes to love, or un-love, as the case may be.

Watching the tragedy of the astronaut and the "tawdry love triangle" (yet to be proved) unfold in front of the world reminds me of one too many missteps in the name of love, but thankful that my pseudo-stalking has never landed me in jail.

[Check out the meaning of this tattoo.]

It's a long and tangled story and not worth re-telling, but it's my blog and you don't have to read it if it bothers you.

February is a magical time in the long story of our un-love. My birthday, his birthday and Valentine's Day are, of course, all in the first fourteen days of February. Many of the past fifteen years, we have a long history, I have spent the last fourteen (or fifteen) days recovering from the first two weeks.

From the beginning there were always more than two in our relationship, sometimes it got as high as four or five, he was a busy guy. In the early years, I managed to be away for my own birthday, so there was no pressure for him to celebrate it. He was always curiously away for his birthday and Valentine's Day. Somewhere I have the first Valentine's and birthday cards he gave me, they were hand made. Sweet? I would love to say that it was sweet ingenuity that led him to make the cards, but probably it was just that he was broke. Starving college students and all that. Though, now, I do wonder if the others got Hallmark while I got handmade, and if it matters at all.

When we took up again, a full ten or eleven years later, the cards were no longer hand made but carefully un-romantic. We might be spending time together and, later, even sleeping together, but I wasn't to get the wrong idea. He cared for me, but love, like being in love, was reserved for his wife, or the other other-woman. I can't tell for sure how many of us there were at that time; I will probably never know. I can only say for sure that I knew my place: at the back of the line.

Every year, February would burst on the scene with a flurry of calls and meetings except for on my birthday. By the time Valentine's Day rolled around, well, I might have seen him for his birthday, and he might have wished me a belated birthday, but it was clear that there were no obligations.