In the last ten years, I can only think of one Saint Valentine's Day where I didn't end up in a hor­ri­ble mood by the end of the day, and boy, did this year not dis­ap­point me in the least.

14 Feb­ru­ary, 2005 was, to me: the first day back to work from a much-needed and much-too-short vaca­tion a day in which I worked over ten hours because my close friend and boss had to fly cross-country to bury a loved one one who died much too young, the day after I had to send a very dear, very close friend over 1,300 miles back home with noth­ing but my thanks for being here, a hug and an over­sized stuffed pen­guin, the day before an even longer (14-hour) work­day, the night I spend alone, and the day where, despite all of the peo­ple who claim to care for me, only one of them picked up the fuck­ing phone and actu­ally let me know.

(Did you know that Valentine's Day isn't cel­e­brated in Brazil?)

A con­ver­sa­tion that I keep com­ing back to in my mind took place within the last few days of Amy's visit here. One thing and I wish I didn't think this of peo­ple I care about, but I'm only human is the thought, the feel­ing that I get that tells me that these peo­ple (and you know who you are, or at least, you should) only seem to show care or even thought for me when I'm actu­ally there. You see, many of the peo­ple that I've come to sur­round myself with and care about are one or more time zones away from here. While I appre­ci­ate the dif­fi­cul­ties that sit­u­a­tion cre­ates, it doesn't mean that I accept them, and it doesn't mean my feel­ings don't get hurt when you don't even show com­mon cour­tesy toward me. I may be states away, but that doesn't make me any harder to reach.

It's fore­thought, sim­ply. It's the care and feel­ing that it takes to do the sim­plest thing. Like send a card. (Espe­cially if it's pur­ple!) Or an e-mail. Or a hug.

Or some­thing.

Or any­thing.

Just let me know you care. Don't make me try to fight it out of you. I'll walk away before that hap­pens. Don't make me think that ask­ing you to take a sec­ond of acknowl­edge­ment is too much for you. Because if it is, I'll stop both­er­ing you.

Maybe the prob­lem is with me. Maybe I do ask too much of peo­ple. Maybe this day makes me a bit more sen­si­tive than I should be maybe that's it.

Maybe not.

Fuck it. I'm mov­ing to Brazil.