I am the One and Only

**February the 14th. A date synonymous with love and romance and happiness and tackiness and misery. It sends the Bridget Joneses out there spiraling into a Cupid induced depression while their happily coupled friends go gallivanting off for an evening of enforced expense and obligatory intimacy (and no I am not bitter or jealous at all).**

We all long for our happily-ever-after fairy tale romantic end, but unfortunately, the world of literature offers us as much despair as hope (see Romeo and Juliet, Cathy and Heathcliff, Gatsby and Daisy, et al).

Here, I offer five alternatives to the traditional singleton’s self-date (drowning one’s sorrows in several tubs of ice cream while wallowing in a week-old fleece onesie) extrapolated from the lives of literary heroines.

Some may not end prettily. And yes there will be spoilers.

**1. The Miss Havisham**

Go out for dinner. Y’know, someplace nice – maybe not just Wagamama’s or Pizza Express. Book a table for one. Don’t bring a book, nor a notepad (everyone knows you can’t possibly be a food critic). Ignore your phone. Treat yourself to a bottle of wine and the most expensive thing on the menu. Eat up. Sneer at the dates adorably bickering over who should pay the bill.

Go home. Put on an aged wedding dress and refuse to leave the house ever again. Stand dangerously close to a fire, surrounded by kindling.

**2. The Madame Bovary**

Wander around an art gallery. Immerse yourself in the works of the masters; Rodin’s “The Kiss”, Courbet’s “The Happy Lovers”, Boucher’s casual grope in “Hercules and Omphale” or something. Ponder what art could possibly be without love.

Pop to the chemist. Nick some arsenic. Ingest a medium amount.

**3. The Ophelia**

Take yourself to see a movie at the cinema (I hear the new _Evil Dead_ remake is going to be good – HA). Laugh, cry, and muse upon your loneliness as you gaze at the sea of couples casually stretching their arms around each other. Leave with your head held high and popcorn stuck to your top.

Grab some flowers. Find a nice pond. Lay yourself down – melodiously.

**4. The Anna Karenina**

Prepare yourself a nice little picnic. Wrap up warm and find yourself a lovely spot in the park. Eat away, merrily watching the world go by holding hands.

When you feel quite finished, make your way to the nearest train station. Wait until a train comes by. Jump in front of it.

**5. The Alice in Wonderland**

(So called because she’s the only famous literary heroine I could think of to not get married or die).

Call your friends. Go out and do something with them: get drunk and complain about members of the opposite sex, how long it’s been or how much you hate your ex. Maybe some kind of mad tea party. Anything that gets you out of indulging in the no-bra-no-make-up day that you had planned, barricaded in your bedroom with BBC iPlayer and three times your RDA of saturated fat’s worth of chocolate.

Realise that you really don’t need an other half to complete you. You already have a whole bunch of other halves a mere group text away.

Remember, my dearest reader, you are not alone.