Happy Love Month
choosing to celebrate love
I’m not old enough quite yet to be a cynic about Valentine’s day, though I feel like another couple years might do me in.
I wrote this before I decided I had to quit my job, so you can read the majority of the present tense below as past tense. Love month is seeming a little lighter and lovelier already. (I’m ignoring the reality of unemployment for the time being.) Consider this my final bittersweet (heavy on the bitter, light on the sweet) ode to family law. (Maybe if it was a different office with different staff, my opinion of family law would be better. But the damage is done, and I'm certainly done with family law.)
Even working in family law hasn’t quite extinguished my belief in love, though the topic of everyone's love lives comes up a little too often for my comfort in the office.
One lawyer is (from what I can tell) happily married. One is separated from her husband (and never intends to divorce him, probably because she's a divorce lawyer), but amicably coparents. The younger associate lawyer is not in a relationship, and she jokes with me that starting an OnlyFans would be less stressful than her current job. Still, she lives and breathes family law and tells me that she'll never leave family law, though she's leaving the firm.
Frances, the only other non-lawyer, is especially invested in my life. From what I've gathered, it's not really out of any sense of care, but boredom and the need to feel superior to someone. She leans back in her chair and props her feet up on her desk. “Have you been in a serious relationship?” I tell her no. “Girlfriend, you NEED to get a life!” She nearly shouts at me. “You won't have time in law school. What are you waiting for, a minister?” I react in horror, but that only makes her swing to the opposite side of the spectrum: “In this day and age, you don't even need to get married to him if you don't want to.” She tells me to figure myself out before it’s too late. (Too late for what?)
When she goes on one of these tirades, I just wait quietly until she’s finished, and then wave generally around at the stacks of boxes in her office, all full of files from ex-couples who absolutely hate each other, and say, “I don’t know, Frances. It doesn’t seem like marriage made things better for them.”
“There are good men out there;” she says, “you just have to find them.”
I wave at the boxes again.
On the floor of the building, there are the two family law firms that I work for, a criminal law firm (we're friendly with them), a mortgage office that no one has ever entered in the time I've been here, and a boudoir photography studio. This last thing is not at all like the others, and I find mild humor in it. It's an experience, walking down the hall, custody orders in hand, while amorous music, steam, and incense snake out from under the door of the boudoir studio. I like the photographer; at least from the pleasant idle small talk we exchange while waiting for the elevator. She often wears bright green pants. I had to email her divorce certificate to her this week, and it saddens me that it didn't work out for her either.
I wonder, often, about the halves of couples who pass through the offices. Presumably, they were in love at some point. Or at least dedicated enough to get the marriage license and change their names and have children together, which, even if not for love, is something. Presumably, there were butterflies at some point. Presumably, there were little flirtations and hopefully, care shared during hard times.
There is no hate like the hate between two people who once loved each other. Some of these people don’t care about how much money they spend or what they want—all they want to see is the other person devastated, whether that be by financially ruining them or keeping their kids away from them.
Seeing the consequences of love grown sour and festering everyday is enough to make the seeds of cynicism grow.
And yet I'm not cynical.
One of our clients has been through a lot in their personal life. Her wife has been coming to the office with her for every visit. Frances tells me, “She's lucky. She's got someone who cares about her.” (Then Frances shows me pictures of her own husband and house.)
Last week, a couple sat on the couch in front of my desk, talking quietly while the lawyers gather papers for them to sign. The woman is terrified about trying to start a custody battle with her abusive ex-husband. The man whispered to her, squeezing her hand in his, “I've got you. We'll get through this. I love you.” It was a sweet moment. I pretended I wasn't there.
How can I think that love doesn't exist when I see that?
I've struggled with love in all forms for many years now. Showing it, giving it, allowing myself to receive it.
My middle school journals are filled with laments about all my friends falling to the sickness of being “boy crazy” and caring more about the boys who were still making armpit noises than anything else.
Now, a shocking number of people I grew up with are married and have babies of their own. Perhaps not too shocking, considering the context I grew up in.
I expected to have figured out the “love” thing by now. But I still feel a bit out of the loop.
All that to say, February is feeling a little complicated already.
A loose acquaintance of mine celebrates the whole month of February annually, dubbing it “love month.” Her celebrations included all types of love, romantic and otherwise.
So, no matter how much I cringe at myself for embracing all the kitschy trappings of a holiday that's been co-opted by romantic love, I am purposefully celebrating love month too.
It feels important to celebrate love this month (and every month, but that's beside the point). Because regardless of the hate and brokenness in the world, there is love still, and I don't want to lose sight of that. My heart is prone to cynicism and cantankerousness, oh I feel it, and if slapping some hearts on the wall helps remind me not to go that direction, by golly I'll do just that.
I'm embracing kitsch and creating a list for myself for maximum love month celebration (because who am I without a list):
Crochet heart themed decor (which has already been up for a couple weeks because I needed the reminder)
Buy myself flowers
Go to a coffee shop by myself with a book
Celebrate Galentine’s Day
Make and send Valentines to friends
Change my lock screen to something ✨️thematic✨️
Read a Jane Austen novel (probably Mansfield Park)
Flowers and paper hearts aren't going to change my life or give me contentment; this much I know. But intention and practices have a way of shaping our thoughts and beliefs.
So instead of sorrow and complaints, I'm choosing crochet hearts. (But if I'm being honest, probably a bit of both.)
Happy love month.
Things I Love This Week:
Tender new leaves on my plants, the audiobook recording of “All Creatures Great and Small,” the cold winter sunshine, chubby mockingbirds, freshly clean sheets, ice-covered lakes.
Happy love month Kettle.