Valentine Rebel

the lover and the fighter

Nov 12, 2023

I’ve always felt like a pretty paradoxical person. Like I have these two contradicting sides: the sweet one, and the salty one. The sensitive one, and the pragmatic one. The creative one, and the structured one.

About 14 months ago, I was on a train traveling across the country of Spain. In a nearly two-hour, impulsively-made decision, I had decided to leave Barcelona where I had been for a week and seek out San Sebastián. The inspiration had come from a number of places: I had recently read The Sun Also Rises, I kept hearing about the food in Basque country, I was longing for a more glittering coastline. In truth, I was bored (after seeing what I had wanted to see) in Barcelona and was itching for a bit of adventure. Within a few hours I had booked some halfway-decent-looking accommodations, the cheapest direct train ticket I could find, and a food tour of sorts, to get my bearings on the new locale.

The train ride was direct, but it took about eight hours. An entire day of travel. This was made even more impractical by the fact that I was going to have to take the same train ride back to Barcelona just five days later, to make my already-scheduled return flight back to the U.S. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I certainly would have planned it differently had I decided on this course of action ahead of time, but I hadn’t and therefore felt I couldn’t complain. I was just flying by the seat of my pants and hoping the change in scenery would be worth it.

The train ride gave me a long time to ponder and journal and read and what not. I listened to some music. I took notes when things came to me. I was lost in a trance of sorts, like a sponge continuously absorbing its surroundings while watching the features of the Spanish countryside go by.

A large part of my contemplations during the trip had revolved around my writing (or lack thereof). I had been working to build a website where I could host a blog but hadn’t quite gotten around to naming it yet. At the time, I felt like I couldn’t put anything out there until I had a proper name (total hogwash), so to solve for this, I constructed a list of potential blog names in my iPhone notes app that was probably 52 lines long. I would come up with words that resonated with me, ones that either described me (or that I had some form of emotional attachment to), and then combine sets of these words all the while trying to find an original, unique form. This had been going on for weeks.

It was during this train ride while I was looking out the window of blurry hills and trees passing by, when a peculiar name to me: Valentine Rebel.

I didn’t know where it came from, but I thought it had an interesting bit of originality to it. I certainly had no idea what it meant. There was no easily definable explanation to me. And yet for whatever reason this name kept on poking and prodding me like an annoying little nuisance that wouldn’t leave me alone.

Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know that I didn’t end up naming it Valentine Rebel. I went with Objectively MELROB, and then pivoted to Real Life, and there is a whole other graveyard of past blog names sprinkled into my very first post available for your entertainment. The reason I didn’t go with Valentine Rebel was because while I felt oddly drawn to it, I couldn’t pin down what it was, or really, what it meant to me.

And let me tell you, while I didn’t use it, this name has continued to linger on in the ether.

Over a year later and this Valentine Rebel nudge still comes to me, all the livelong time. It quite literally feels like an intuitive spark that just won’t go away. For months I have tried to figure out some form of meaning around it: why it’s there, why it even matters to me. And who really knows, right? We’re just talking about a couple words here.

BUT I think what’s developed in these words to me is a representation of that paradoxical nature I feel so constantly torn between. Maybe Valentine Rebel is the simplest way I can explain these two very disparate and different selves I feel. Valentine being the sweet and romantic, the loving, sensitive side of me. And Rebel being that bold and fiery, independent (often defiant) part of me. The lover and the fighter. My inner yin and yang. Contradictory, paradoxical, but true.

If you’ve read this post you know that I was very close with my grandmother, and she played a significant role in my life. She also died on Valentine’s Day, something I associate with her immensely. In a weird way, the name almost feels like a tribute to her. After all, she is a person who I would consider the great Valentine Rebel herself. Tender and loving and traditional sometimes, while adventurous and stubborn and fierce at other times. She both adhered to and defied stereotypes, all bundled up into one complex and ferociously loving package.

SO as much as it pains me to rename this newsletter AGAIN, I am trying to follow my gut here. I spent a year using names that I thought “made more sense” to the outside and now I have decided to throw all that out the window in an attempt to finally listen to my godforsaken intuition.

The idea of this Valentine Rebel energy just won’t go away for me, and now that I’ve built more meaning around it, I plan to use it as inspiration for future posts that focus around that paradox. Because we all have a bit of Valentine Rebel within us. We are all part lover and part fighter.

Plus, this gives me an even better excuse now to dedicate this blog (and this work) to my grandmother, my own personal Valentine Rebel, who taught me better than most how to straddle the line between being a loving and devoted human while also being a real force to be reckoned with.

I hope to make her proud.

Valentine Rebel

the lover and the fighter

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