I used to like Valentine’s Day, and how everyone made Valentine trinkets for each other in elementary school.

The night before was full of excitement since you knew what was waiting for you as soon as you got to your desk, and that the multiple checks of making sure all your classmates got your trinkets. This made everyone feel included, and as if they fit in as it felt like Christmas, but Valentines themed.

As I got older, I no longer saw the value of Valentine’s Day as I once knew it to be, look and feel like. I filled my mind with expectations and dreams hoping to get something special from my past crushes, and hope that they would recite their undying love for me.

Let’s be real, that was the beginning of me realizing that I was a hopeless romantic and that I spent way too much time on Wattpad.

I got my middle school heart broken when my crush told my friend to tell me that I was ugly and annoying. I never saw Valentine’s Day the same way for a while after that. At first I cried, and cried and threw my store bought chocolates out the window as the day went south and nowhere near my expectations.

When I got to high school I lowered my expectations and was glad I did when an upperclassman put rose petals in the shape I heart you outside of his crush’s classroom. He asked her out in front of cameras, and other hopeless romantic teenagers only to be met with humility, embarrassment and sadness. When she said that she had a boyfriend in front of the sea of onlookers and the boy.

It sucked to hear that this happened to a stranger I went to school with as I thought that any girl would have been lucky to have that happen to her, but not everyone felt the same. Some kids said that he should have known that she was in a relationship while others appreciated the effort he made, and the courage he had to ask her in the first place.

If there’s anything Valentine’s Day has taught me is that rejection is redirection.

The redirection I had was seeing that we need love as much as we don’t want to admit we do, and that love is all we need. I’m not going to break out in song and sing a bunch of songs about love, dear reader. I will say this if I had to choose what decade I would have loved to have received love in it would be the nineties.

That way I could feel as if I’m living in a nineties sitcom. Maybe just a vintage love since love in this generation is close to nonexistent. There’s no trust, just sidechicks and no getting out of the talking stage. There’s no putting the jacket on the ground to prevent the girl’s shoes from getting wet, there’s no genuine feelings and there’s certainly no effort in trying to get someone and keeping them in the long term.

Love nowadays has me asking what the point of it is if most people find and have it for the wrong reasons. This day only makes it harder for those who think they need to be in a relationship to enjoy it. I think that this is sad because these people come across as if they don’t know how to spoil themselves, and would much rather someone else do it for them.

As a college student Valentine’s Day is just a reminder to love yourself and those around you if you believe in love or not. Love throughout the decades has changed on tv screens to in person, and watching old shows from previous generations lets me be more of a hopeless romantic.

Shows like Saved By The Bell, Fresh Prince, and Family Matters to name a few have set unwritten high standards for me when it comes to my ideal and dream relationship as the couples portrayed in them are my couple goals.

From the interactions to character developments and the moments they have together overall is what makes me a hopeless romantic that has couple goals. The Valentine’s Day specials are the best to watch if you don’t have Valentine’s Day plans.