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(story continued)
The musty basement room filled up with dozens of eager dancers. The music started.

To be 21, mourning the loss of one of your best friends, single, drinking Government Fruit Punch, and watching an entire region's MR/MI population attempt do the Macarena in sync, in the basement of one of the creepiest mental hospitals in the country, on VALENTINE'S DAY was, bar none, the most surreal moment of my life thus far.

At that moment, I knew. I may be single for a while, but I could never spend another Valentines's Day like that. I was too young to spend my weekends in the world of supportive living any longer. I gave my notice that week, and within a month I was shelving CDs at a music store.

Every Valentine's Day since has been better than that one year, and every year that I was single, I reminded myself of how bad it could be. "HEY! Macarena!" 
-- Gretchen Schaefer


This Valentines Day will be my toughest ever. Like Michael Jackson releasing a Greatest Hits album on the same day the cops move in, it really couldn't come at a more inappropriate time.

I'm nearing three months into break up. For those less familiar with the process, it works in a string of rather loose, random and interchangeable emotional stages. I've crossed the "denial" stage ('so we're just on a non-refundable break'), grappled with "rejection" ('so I'm everything you could ever want, but feel nothing for'), lingered on the "bargaining" ('please reassess while I clear the wet towels from the floor'), broken through the "anger" ('you could have said something before I mentioned a diving holiday in Tahiti') and -- aside from the occasional spluttering of the roller coaster as it fulfills its journey -- reached that all important stage of "acceptance" ('Thanks for your postcard. Sounds like you and 'Martin' are having fun. Hope the diving equipment works okay…'). Inner peace is within grasping distance.

Then along comes Valentines Day. A day that polarizes the earth into couples and singles is bad enough. For those of us still in transition, it becomes the toughest test of all: Judgment Day. A 24 hour assault on your inner senses gauging whether the work you've done, the pain you've suffered, the self-questioning you've put yourself through, the lessons you've learnt and the progress you've made has amounted to anything more substantial than a lot of self-convincing ('I'm so over that, I feel alive again, I could never build an IKEA self-assembly shelving unit before' etc) and too many hours down the gym. (story continues...)

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