Diamonds

"I felt this awful obligation to be charming 

or at least have something to say, 

and the pressure of having to be charming (or merely verbal) 

incapacitates me."  

— Peter Cameron

All right. I thought I would be able to cruise into tomorrow on hope and excitement, but it's already starting- the holiday is terrifying me. I am so scared that Valentine's Day will be another day to mark in the column of 'bad days'. The date attempts of the last 6 months have been less than stellar, to say the least. I'm tempted to skip it altogether.

I've tried to get into it. We bought Millie a tiny pink tutu last night, and I spent the evening taking photo after photo. But the past several holidays haven't been great. They've actually been quite the opposite. I've gritted my teeth through most of them, praying the days would be over quickly, trying to be apathetic about them and failing. One by one, bloggers are posting pictures of their husband's gifts to them (early, for some reason?), and I've seen so many bouquets in the past 48 hours that I can practically smell the flowers through the pictures.

I want to go into tomorrow with cheerfulness, but all I feel is an enormous amount of pressure. It was honestly much easier a few years ago, when I spent a Valentine's Day more or less single. I'm more nervous to spend an evening out with my husband than on any silly date I've been on. The stakes are so much higher. When I looked up the word "pressure" on my favorite quotes site, a million of them came up saying things like "pressure makes diamonds".

Things have been so rough. We've spent more of our marriage fighting to keep it from shattering than we have being silly newlyweds. One day of that fight is hard- months of it is exhausting.

I want tomorrow to be a diamond so badly. I want something, anything, to come from the weight of these days.