Valentine's Day and Tough Love

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So, yesterday was Valentine’s Day and it was actually my first Valentine’s Day as a married person, so the pressure was off. Past Valentine’s Days have included meats that require like twelve hours of cook time, horse and carriage rides, and cutting out 100s of multicolored hearts. After all of that crap, we are both exhausted so we were happy to do the standard—flowers for me, chocolate for him, dinner for both of us.

We finished the night by going to a local movie theater to see the 2012 Oscar nominated short animated films. One of them, “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” was about the power of books and the power of love. I blubbered like a baby over it. If you have the opportunity to see it, just do it. I did have a chocolate raspberry martini and I am on the verge of getting my period—but honestly, it was really good. Even half the crying I did would be a lot of crying.

Anyway, I didn’t want to write about short films. I wanted to discuss a few things about Valentine’s Day. Firstly, there is a lot of pressure for both sexes. As soon as I got into my car on Tuesday morning the radio was playing a desperately sad country song whose words were essentially, “If your heart doesn’t have love then it isn’t worth living.” Okay. Good job public radio. Don’t beat around the bush. 

I remember being painfully single for way more Valentine’s Days than I was coupled up. One year I actually tried to sleep through the entire day. I’m not kidding—I was woken up by a text with a picture of roses that said, “Happy Valentine’s Day! I love you!” I barely had time to wonder w ho it was from before it was followed quickly by, “Whoops. Wrong number.”

However, I owe a lot to Valentine’s Day and to blogging for that matter. In the first iteration of my blog I wrote an entry about how terrible Valentine’s Day had been to me. How I had only ever received heart shaped boxes of chocolate from my sweet Dad and how I actually never been asked on a super romantic Valentine’s date. I wrote about how I wished someone would break the Valentine’s day mean streak that I had going for about twenty years. I don’t remember what I did after that, but I’m guessing that I probably drank a bottle of wine and went to bed listening to Norah Jones.

I do know, that the next day I was contacted by the super attractive guy that I had met at a party a few months back and was casually talking to me. He sent me a song that he recorded himself for me and asked if he could take me on a Valentine’s date. I real one. With dressing up and shit. Of course, I went (and that’s another really good long story). He took me to the opera. It snowed softly. My hair stayed perfect the whole time somehow—a feat that it has never done since. It was fantastic. So good, in fact, that I married him a few years later.

Not only did Valentine’s day bring us together for our first real date, but it also really tested the strength of our relationship last year. It was February 13. I just taken a new job, we moved into a new apartment, and the entire place was scattered with boxes which I just knew had broken things in them because I had marked them all “fragile” therefore making it easier to ignore.

Also, I was getting married in exactly six months to the day.

I was working hard during the day to get acclimated to my job, living on Lean Cuisines, and unpacking all night while I watched marathons of Say Yes to the Dress. I was on the phone fighting with vendors, trying to put together IKEA furniture (honestly I think they could save space in prisons by having the people who did petty crimes just put together other people’s IKEA furniture all day), and not really sleeping. You never saw a more stressed out person. Still need a good fake name for my husband. For now I’ll just call him D. D took to calling me “Stress Cat.”

So this next part I have always lied about because I was way too embarrassed for anyone to know the truth, but since blogs are really only fun if you tell the bad parts and since it was an entire year ago, I guess I can finally reveal the truth of what happened.

I took a break from packing becau se D was playing the Playstation Move game “Sports Champions.” You may be familiar with it. You can use it to play video game versions of tennis and Frisbee and things that really should be done outside in real life and not one-handed while you scarf down pizza with the other hand.

One of the aspects of this game is a gladiator-type game in which you use the controller as a sword and beat the crap out of virtual people. I—who spent my entire young life not owning a video game system because I was forced to read books—was unequivocally the best at this game. So when D asked me if I wanted to take a break and play I thought it would be a great way to release some of the stress I was under.

I played for about a minute when I did a move that the game prompted me to do—swipe energetically and… JUMP!

&#822 0;Jump!” D yelled, encouraging me.

I did, and then I immediately crumpled to the floor in a ball in the most searing pain I had felt in my entire life. I laid there in shock and screaming—literally screaming. Poor D. He had no idea what was going on. I think he thought I was dying. I never saw his face so pale and scared. I realized really quickly that from the waist down my body was useless. If I tried to move it, nothing happened and pain would rocket through me and pull me back down again.

A million things ran through my head. Valentine’s Day, which I had really been looking forward to, was ruined. We were planning to go to NYC and stay overnight in a hotel. Lots of lovely romantic things. But then I realized that  my wedding would be right around the corner I currently couldn’t stand up on my own. How would I walk down the aisle? Would I get immensely fat from not being able to exercise?

D insisted on taking me to the emergency room, and since I couldn’t walk more than a few inches really, he basically carried me to the car, with me screaming at the top of my lungs into his ear the entire time. I decided right then that if he could tolerate that, then we would be just fine in our future together.

Long story short, I had a lower back spasm that is common in young people. It tightened up my muscles so solidly that it moved two of my discs out of place. The emergency room didn’t give me a muscle relaxer because apparently I made a mistake and went to the clown hospital, and so for the next few weeks I hobbled around, making everything worse and being miserable. Two epidurals and three months of physical therapy later, I could at least stand up straight. Before that I was forced to walk around like the letter C.

There was a lot of crying, a lot of D having to embarrassingly help me to the bathroom, and a lot of me having to tell him how to do absolutely everything that I had done by myself before that. A year later, I still get some stiffness and I know better than to try and lift or move anything that’s over a few pounds for fear of damaging it again. I still worry about it quite a bit. But I never worry about D and I. He stepped up to the plate in every way. When your future wife is screaming in your ear like a banshee and you are forced to worry that she may not be able to walk for a very long time I’m sure you have to make a choice to call an ambulance and just wave goodbye or help her through it. I am the most independent person ever, so I had to learn to rely on him and to be okay with it. If he doesn’t move the chair and vacuum under it, I had to learn to live with it. It was a good lesson, although I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

I told everyone in my life that I had basically destroyed my back by lifting a box that was too heavy for me while I was unpacking. I couldn’t bear to say that I had ruined myself on a video game. I felt like one of those stupid Youtube videos of the guys that whips the remote through the TV, except I whipped right through my lower back muscles. It took several months for me to see the PS3 and not vomit in fear.

I got ready for Valentine’s Day very hesitantly yesterday. I feared the worst of it for sure, but it was a nice, non-eventful day and I hope that I won’t have one as bad as last year’s again…ever.

Whether you’re single, dating someone, or married to a man who would happily help you up from the toilet because you legs don’t work—I hope you had a lovely Valentine’s Day.