Don’t have somebody this Valentine’s Day? So what? “Go out and pick yourself up something nice,” says outspoken advice columnist Tionna Smalls, who’s mobilizing the lovelorn to take the holiday back.

by Tionna Smalls

My name is Tionna Smalls. I am outgoing, motivated, intelligent, with boobs for days, and I am single. Many people ask me why am I single? This question comes from family members, strangers and men who are trying to get in my drawers. It’s like a question people ask me on the daily. It’s funny because when I tell people that I am single, they look at me like I just told them I have a rash on my catbag that just won’t go away. I used to sometimes sit and ask myself, was there something wrong with me being single?

I then came up with the pros and cons of being single. The pros were being able to do whatever I wanted without regard to another human being. The cons were sleeping in my cold, queen-sized bed every night by my lonesome, and the feeling of not having someone to hold at night or to go to the movies with. In my really lonely days, the cons outweighed the pros. No matter how much freedom being unattached gave me, something inside was missing—something that playing with my big chocolate-colored vibrator wasn’t giving me.

Thinking like this often makes me flashback to 2005: the last year that I could say I was in a safe, stable, monogamous relationship. I think back to the days when I, too, Ms. Single Now, looked at pretty, single women as hopeless individuals that couldn’t find a man if their life depended on it. Funny thing about life is when you’re in a relationship, everybody is single and when you’re absolutely single, all of a sudden everybody’s loser baby daddy is back on the good foot. I don’t know why this happens—hell, I guess it keeps us all grounded.

When I first became single, it was hard for me to understand that I was really single. Maybe it was because my ex-boyfriend was still paying my bills and still emotionally available for me, but like all good things, about a year later, that ended. Finally I was all alone and left responsible to pay my own bills. I mean, I always kept a dollar in my pocket, so it wasn’t too hard, but it was trouble to get used to. Another thing that was hard to get used to was going through my personal problems alone. I was so used to calling up my ex when things went wrong and him being my savior that when things happened to me then, I didn’t know how to handle it. Hell, I focused so much on being a “we” that I forgot about being “me,” and that’s when the evolution of Tionna Smalls began.

This growth began one day after my ex made it extremely clear that we weren’t getting back together. He explained to me that my tears, temper tantrums and crazy late-night phone calls meant nothing to him, and he was ready to go on with his life. I sat there in disbelief, but finally I realized that that was the ass whipping (aka reality check) that I was missing. See, I realized then and there that what was missing within myself was me. I was in a relationship so long that I didn’t know myself outside of it. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and I basically didn’t know what I liked about myself. I really was in dire need of getting my mind right.

I then went on a route to find this beautiful black girl. I wanted to find her, caress her broken little heart and fall in love with her all over again. In order to love this girl, I had to spend many nights with her. Yes—the good, the bad, the lonely and the horny nights. During this voyage of self love, I realized that I never loved myself as a woman. I guess I mistook conceit, self indulgence and high regard for self as unconditional love. Wow, how misguided I was! See, when you love yourself, you never allow anyone to do just anything to you. You know right away that you deserve the best of the best—yes the crème de la crème. I realized then that that was one of the major reasons why relationships didn’t work out for me: How could I love someone else if I didn’t love myself?

Before I started loving myself, I hated being alone. Being by myself just made me feel like a true cornball, a dork, an outcast; but now things have certainly changed. I have come to the point where I would rather be alone. I looked at all the people I knew who were in messed-up relationships, but stayed in them. They were sad cases because they didn’t realize that if they were involved in a bad relationship, they were alone anyway.

I no longer have a negative connotation about being single. I now know that being single is time for self-development, so that you can be the best you for yourself and the next person you end up with. Being single is also time for you to find out what it is within yourself that you want because, believe it or not, many of us don’t know what we want. You also get a lot of things professionally accomplished once you are single. I know because I wrote a book, opened a company and became one of the most well-known advice columnists in the blog world, all in less than a year. Maybe I got rid of all the distractions by becoming single (yep, who needs the drama of a deadbeat boyfriend). It all seemed to work out for me, and it damn sure can work for you if you are ready to live through the cold and horny nights.

This Valentine’s Day, I am telling you to have no fear about being by yourself. You’re going to see people on the bus, in the breakfast place and at work gushing over what gift their man has bought them and acting all lovey-dovey with one another. Don’t get mad, because your day of happiness will come, too. I truly suggest you go out beforehand and pick yourself up something nice because if you don’t buy yourself something nice, who will? But don't go and buy it because it’s Valentine’s Day; go out and buy it because you love yourself enough to know that you deserve it. Don’t just stay in the house watching television while eating bon bons; get up and take yourself out, or go out with your other single friends and have a good ol’ time. And if all else fails, stay in the crib, have a nice hot bath and a drink and say, “This is dedicated to me.”

Tionna Smalls is a writer from Brooklyn, N.Y. She is the author of the book, Girl, Get Your Mind Right! She is also the advice columnist for Radar Magazine. You can reach her at tionnatsmalls@yahoo.com.