There was a time, before I was a fully formed cynic, that I loved Valentine’s Day. All the romantic possibilities! It was dizzying to my little brain, which was regrettably over-informed by movies and Disney and my immature understanding of what exactly love was all about. And to the average twelve-year-old girl, love is all about boys. The boys who like you, and boys who you like, and how you desperately want them to know you like them, yet you live in paralyzing fear of them finding out that you like them. And Valentine’s Day would roll through the school day, heavy with anticipation and giggling and complex interpretations of what exactly did it mean to give or receive a candy heart that said “You’re sweet!” on it.

The day would inevitably end with clear lines drawn between the desirable and the undesirable. Those showered in tiny pink cards and candies, those romantic elite carrying roses or candy around, with the hand of their paramour stuck in the back pocket of their Lee jeans; and then the rest of us, jilted, our red-foil-and-doily heart overtures unrequited, or ignored entirely, staring longingly at the prizes of romantic success.

Maturity and a little cynicism saved me and countless others from that whole scene by sophomore year in high school, when one begins to suspect that perhaps those dice are loaded; that your romantic fate is not the whim of a single holiday whose paltry existence is predicated on nothing of any historical value or importance, but rather something that you can determine for yourself.

And I’ve spent every single Valentine’s Day since then either desperately trying to forget it existed, or at least doing my very best to pretend to forget it existed.

But it’s hard when the gooey center of your hard cynical shell is just a girl who likes flowers and cards with sweet notes inside and candlelit dinners. And even though I know that Valentine’s Day is not special—that I like flowers, cards and candlelit dinners any day of the year—this obnoxious aspect of my personality makes me deplorably susceptible to the insinuation of importance, however false, that surrounds Valentine’s Day: Every store window festooned in hearts; every advertisement hawking lingerie, chocolate, roses, or diamonds; the fully booked restaurants crowded in with doe-eyed couples. I want no part of it, yet somehow, every year, by the end of the day I feel like I’m back in sixth grade, sitting there, dejected, with nary a card or a box of candied hearts to affirm my romantic desirability.

Never mind that I have a wonderfully caring and generous partner who has a bottomless knack for acts of selflessness, love, and admiration all year long. You would think this would spare me my prosaic, childish compulsion to participate in Valentine’s Day, especially as the better, smarter part of my brain gleefully, willfully denies its existence and is aesthetically and morally repelled by the whole event. So hopefully this is the year I’ll finally triumph over Valentine’s Day. This year I’ll really be done with it, and I’ll get on with my life.

Though I think I said the same thing last year.