#44: I Accidentally Sold My Soul to the Devil Via 'Be Mine' Valentine

HUMOR

Dear friends,

With v-day right around the corner, I must impart some wisdom with a cautionary tale. Beware whose valentines you accept this season of love. ❤️💀❤️💀❤️

Some Februarys ago, it was a Valentine’s like any other. I taped my decorated brown paper bag to the door of my apartment, elementary school style, so all my devotees could drop off their love notes. Most admirers, “secret” and known, I’ve come to expect: my boyfriend; my grandma; my dad pulling into the driveway after work while one of my sisters runs out waving her arms saying, “It’s Valentine’s Day! It’s Valentine’s Day!” until he reverses out of the driveway, grabs flowers for my mom and sisters and me from the nearest grocery store, and then pulls back into the driveway as if he remembered all along; my mom; my grandpa’s best friend from high school who sends me a SpongeBob valentine with a $2 bill inside every year; my gynecologist; that one friend from college who never fully grasped the meaning of PLATONIC. The usual suspects. (Brag. I’m, like, very loved.) But that year, at the bottom of the bag, laid an enticing little card I didn’t recognize.

Of course, I had to take off points for straight-up ripping off Bridgerton. But it was a hot topic that year, so I let it slide. Regardless, I was intrigued. The card wasn’t signed. Mysterious! A real-life secret admirer? It was handmade for Christ’s sake! All clip art and glue and handwriting. That’s worth at least double the full-size landscape supermarket cards, which we all know are worth triple the vertical normal size ones you had to give to everybody in your class whether they pushed you into a barbed wire fence because they “saw a bee” or not. Somebody went to all this trouble for me? In this economy, that smidge of effort, that morsel of forethought is enough to earn my love. Naturally, I checked yes and hung the valentine on my fridge. Bummer, I thought, that since we aren’t in school to goss at recess and gush over the valentines we got and gave, decoding what each Hot Wheels- and Power Puff Girls-themed message meant from our secret (and more often than not, painfully obvious) crushes, my admirer would never even know I checked yes! Or so I thought.

Not long after I checkmarked my fate, he arrived in a plume of smoke, all horns and tail and devilish grin. I won’t lie. The Devil is hot. #fireemoji He collected his contract along with a drop of my blood. (The Devil is also diabetic if you didn’t know? He still uses the old-school finger prick method to check his levels, so the blood draw was actually super easy and painless. I could feel my heartbeat in my fingertip after he left, a reminder of my admirer. Anyway, he’s pro affordable insulin, and if that guy gets that the American healthcare system is broken, I think we definitely need to do something about it. I digress.) Turns out the Devil is a total feminist and came up with this whole elaborate secret valentine’s plan to teach me the lesson that women don’t belong to anyone and I should never agree to “be” anyone’s. Unfortunately, the valentine blood oath thing was binding, so I am legally his, but it was mostly a formality. I mean, still scary. And now when I eventually become rich and famous I’m going to have to credit him. I’m already dreading what that’s going to look like with the Illuminati negotiations. The point is, being someone’s is annoying as hell. Like the Devil taught me, we only belong to ourselves. Except me. I technically belong to him. You get it. Self love is love, don’t sell your soul, etc.

I know the media likes to stir up fear and whip out warnings to squash our holiday fun. I’ve never found needles in my Halloween candy or drugs in my Easter eggs. But if you heed one caution, let it be this one: The Devil sends valentines, and he’s damn good at it. Accept them if you will. Repent if you must. Just know, he got to me first.

Happy early Valentine’s Day, lovebirds!

Ariana