Since my first serious boyfriend, I have been single for a precious few Valentine’s Days. I had boyfriends, love interests, flings, and even one deeply emotional affair that kept me feeling attached on the international day of love. And, on the two or so occasions that I was truly single, I benefited from the overflow of love coming from my parents on their anniversary. In short, I had never found myself truly alone, capital S—no man in sight—S.I.N.G.L.E. until 2019.
Late in 2018, in an effort to combat the oncoming and inevitable winter blues, my company invited a chiropractor to the office to give pressure point massages, free of charge. I’d only received this service once before, at the finish line of my first half marathon, and I was a little skeptical about getting touched by stranger in our company’s board room. After some encouragement from my coworkers, I decided to take the offer and a few days later I found myself laying on a table in the middle of the workday.
As luck would have it, the chiropractor was a long-distance runner; and so, I quickly explained my general pain points before he unceremoniously shoved his thumb into my hip.
“This will probably be painful,” he said as he pushed harder into my side.
Ten minutes later, my hips were released, and I was signing up for a complimentary consultation at the chiropractor’s office. They got me.
The chiropractor ordered x-rays, took photos, and explained that sitting at my desk all day in combination with little core strength and a total disregard to post-run stretching were a lethal combination. He was right, and I was annoyed. The annoyance was mitigated as soon as he cracked my neck for the first time, and I swiftly agreed to the twice a week appointment plan he had set out for me. Between the chiropractor and the therapist that I’d already been seeing for two years, I was now visiting a doctor’s office three times a week. This was so not me. I was the girl that only went to the doctor when absolutely necessary; if I wasn’t bleeding out, it wasn’t a priority.
The three appointments a week were a slog.
Therapy was hard. My therapist didn’t just sit across from me and chat for an hour as I’d assumed all therapists did. He suggested we use an emotionally intense approach for combating trauma called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR. Although he had warned me that EMDR might be intense, I wasn’t fully prepared for the level of work that I had to put in. Some memories took months to reprocess and I felt like I wasn’t making any progress. Not only were the appointments difficult, but the after-effects of EMDR would hit me at unlikely moments. I’d feel fine leaving my appointments, and then a few days later I’d be sobbing in the parking lot at work. Despite the difficulty, I kept going back because I trusted that one day things might click.
In addition to the weekly therapy appointments, the twice-weekly chiropractic appointments seemed to offer equally slow progress. My hips still felt tight and my runs were feeling average. He assigned homework in the form of ab workouts; and much like my therapist, he’d call me out when I wasn’t buying into the process.
Everything was a freaking process with these guys.
But, I felt like I had a team of professionals on my side—a team of people working on me—and so I kept showing up. EMDR started to move more quickly and my core became a little stronger, but I still had to put in the work.
And so, I worked. I worked on my core, my anxiety, my posture, my negative self-talk, my running form, my dog’s training, my school work—and, I worked on my full-time job that paid me, so I could fund the elective work.
As February 14, 2019 approached all I could think about was not forgetting to wish my parents a happy anniversary. I was going to therapy the day before and the chiropractor the day of, and with my heavy workload I was more concerned about forgetting their anniversary than I was about anything else that day.
On Valentine’s morning I did not awake to surprise flowers or chocolates from a secret admirer. Instead, I was greeted with an extra-long walk across town to retrieve my car from a designated tow-free zone. The previous night’s snow storm brought a glorious pink sunrise, and I slowly meandered through the completely silent early morning streets of Portland. The cold morning air was invigorating, and I was given precious time alone to enjoy my thoughts.
The rest of the day was uneventful. As my co-workers took off early to buy flowers or get ready for dinner with their partners I joked that the only person touching me that day was my chiropractor. As the office emptied, I waited for some loneliness or sadness to creep in. But it didn’t.
At the chiropractor’s office, the secretaries gave out pink roses to the patients, and I took mine home to give to my dog. Baxter determined that it wasn’t edible, and quickly lost interest in my gift in favor of chewing on a toy while I made myself dinner. I sat at my table for one eating a completely forgettable meal on Valentine’s Day and once again waited for loneliness or sadness to settle in. But again, it didn’t.
Instead, I felt fine. I didn’t crack open a bottle of wine and watch a romantic comedy. I didn’t eat a box of chocolates in the bathtub. I didn’t sulk, or cry, or feel unloved and unlovable. I just felt fine. I’d spent so much time working on myself from the inside out that I’d forgotten to worry about anything else. I didn’t feel the absence of a partner on Valentine’s Day because I didn’t need someone else to make me feel whole; I had achieved that through my own hard work.
It was in that moment that I realized what my version of self-love was really about. I was not, and will likely never be, the type of person to stand naked in front of a mirror and say “I love you” out loud. I was, however, becoming the type of person that felt worthy of existing and taking up space on this planet. I took time, so much time, to work on myself for a very personal goal. I was not going to therapy to make someone else happy, nor was I going to the chiropractor to make someone else feel good. This work was all for me, and that was the type of self-love that I really needed.