An Unexpected Valentine’s Date
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Dating Game
By Dallas Woodburn

Supposing you have tried and failed again and again. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down.
~Mary Pickford

If only it had been a different accident. Something more elegant, less embarrassingly clumsy. But no, I tripped over a curb and fell headfirst into a low brick wall, whacking my nose and splitting my forehead open. Fortunately, my parents lived mere blocks away. Clutching my bleeding head, I managed to pull my cell phone from my purse and dial home. My dad arrived within minutes, gave me an ice pack to press against the golf-ball-sized lump swelling on my forehead, and drove me straight to the hospital.

It was Valentine’s evening but I had no plans anyway. Six months before, I had ended things with George, my long distance boyfriend of two years. He was fun and sweet, always the life of the party, but had the focus and self-discipline of a four-year-old. What I once found charming — his spontaneity, his boyishness, his tendency to make a joke out of everything — devolved into a source of stress. It became routine for him to call me at two a.m. in a panic, only half a page into an eight-page paper due the next morning, wanting my comfort. But there was nothing I could say or do to help. He needed to find motivation within himself. The next morning, he’d call and apologize and say he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, to be partners always. (Keep reading)