Happy Death Year <3

The Nightmare Before Valentine's Day

Hey All,

Al here. I just want to thank you all for tuning in over the years. I know that this is normally a cooking blog, but I wanted to make a post about recent events, considering my birthday is coming up. I’ve decided not to make a cake this year. Looking back, we’ve really done some incredible stuff here, haven’t we?

I remember making this cake. It’s the first time I ever posted baking to the blog. All my life, I hated that my birthday was Valentine’s Day. I’d always been that chubby, unpopular kid in the corner. The one no one wanted to be with. That was my birthday, a stain on February’s white apron; the lonely day. 

Then, I met Val. I turned 22 the day I made this cake. It felt like the first time I’d ever celebrated my birthday. I’d only ever written about pasta and curry and reductions and glazes but Val pushed me to share it with all of you. Because of her, I found you guys, my community- my followers, my cake-heads. I could never have imagined all the attention that dumb birthday cake would have generated.

Our Day

It’s funny, in a way, while I was with Val I learned to love Valentine’s day. I learned to love my birthday. Through sugar and yeast and fondant and tacky poetry and hearts and candy I found some pearl of self admiration, of tenderness that got lost in that fat-kid gutter decades back. Val rolled up her cuff and plunged her arm elbow-deep into the sewer of my self esteem and dredged that pearl from the depths. She taught me to love me. I still love me. 

We always joked that Valentine’s day was, well, Val’s day. And my day. Our day together. She’s helped me make these gaudy saccharine monstrosities for you cake-addicts on the internet every year for almost a decade. 

Not this year. 

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this on the blog before, but Val was born on January 9th.

This Year

This will be my first Valentine’s day alone in 9 years. This year has been hard on all of us. By now, I’m sure that each and every one of my dear readers has lost someone as near and dear to them as my Val. I’m so, so sorry.

It hasn’t even been 6 weeks yet and already the world is on fire. I’m not going to waste the time I have left here speculating. Every single post, article, video, news item I see is speculating angry gods, mass hypnosis, vaccine toxins, alien brainwashing. I haven’t the energy to search the universe for why.

All I know is that Val, my Val, who taught me to love myself and to proudly post gaudy baked goods, took her own life in the early morning a month ago today. On January 9th. 

Like all of you, I’ve had just under 6 weeks to process all of this. Just a month to understand why the love of my life stole away under the cover of darkness, why she didn’t wait for our day. 

Why don’t any of them wait? What made 22 million people kill themselves on January 1st? On January 2nd? Or 3rd? On every day since? What do they see that we don’t? What do we have yet to see? What is so awful that even babies are shaking themselves to death? 

Death Day

It’s five days until my birthday. Until Valentine’s day. Until my Death Day. I thought about making a cake early, but that wasn’t us. That’s not how Val and I spent our day. We’d toss silly ideas back and forth in bed for an age before one of us eventually found something so disgustingly over the top that we both knew, just knew in our hearts, the other had won. We’d go buy the ingredients fresh- it was even better if a store was sold out of candy hearts or fake roses and we had to go to another, it only heightened the kitsch. 

It’s dangerous to even go out shopping– a few of my neighbors here in downtown Chicago have been killed by Jumpers. Even if you wait until after the “morning rush,” more and more people are sleeping in on their Death Days.

Yesterday, two pedestrians got flattened a street over by a 600 pound February 8th birthday boy at 4 in the afternoon. Even if you make it to one of the stores that is still open, I haven’t seen any with Valentine’s decorations or candy hearts. 

No, the only Valentines day cakes I bake are on the day itself. On my birthday. A  day for which we all now know I wont be present. 

So that’s why I’m writing this post now, in advance. For you, my cake-heads. I’m sorry to let you down. On my birthday I will wake up mad, just like every other human being on the planet born on Valentines day. I’ll writhe and scream and sob and do everything humanly possible to end things. 

That’s what Val did. 

Until then, I’ll be spending the time I have left with my family. Thanks for all the fun times over the years- if you’ve got a later birthday than me, I’d be really touched if you ate some gaudy Valentines day cake in my honor.

I’d say until next time, but… well, see you on the other side, cake-heads. ✌