One year later, I finally feel the age of 30 kicking in. I accidentally hit “PAUSE” several days before my 30th birthday. Letting the wind swept me to the floor.
When the pause is over, the world span from the left, crashed from the right, invaded from the above, and hollowed from below. We are hallucinated in the front, abandoned from the back.
Then I remembered everything happened on that day:
I was sitting in the middle of the first row in a cramped classroom. There are in total 62 of us. We’ve only met 5 days ago. All of us. We barely know each other.
Nobody has my Facebook, yet. Or LinkedIn. Nobody will receive any notifications like “Wish Catherine a happy birthday!” And pretend they’ve seen it.
I cannot mentioned it to anybody. No matter how I bring that up, it feels desperate and awkward.
But do I wish some secret admirer could have figured that out and tell the entire group? Oh of course, tell me about it.
The four guys sitting besides me, two left and two right, however, all looked dashing in different ways. We shine as a group. And I’m the black hole in the middle. Their combined strength was like waves in the ocean. While in this ocean, I was a small turtle, trying hard to reach the sand. I felt drowned.
Had I not shaved my head 8 months ago, I should have a better confidence on the first days of my MBA. I’ve always known I have a cute face. People will be kind to me because of my face, big eyes, kind smile. But one day, I lost my mid-long perfectly straight black hair.
My Asian cutie signature look suddenly fell apart. I know my sensitivity should have aggregated the situation. But sometimes the whole world is just not smiley and breezy anymore.
That’s why there is no secret admirer who discovered my birthday.
My hair on my 30th birthday, was short and ill-shaped. Something made me feel like a square-headed dumb-ass.
To add upon that, I don’t know how to face 30. As I sat there in the Singaporean AC artificial indoor winter, half of the time I racked my brains not to sound stupid (therefore I didn’t really talk), the other half I was left in astonishment “wow I finally turned 30”.
Why? What does it say?
I was fundamentally confused. On my 30th birthday, I didn’t know where this was going. The four guys (let’s call them Lovely 4 “L4” from now on) and the intensely new environment. I didn’t understand why I made life choices by intuition and impulse. I had nothing left and I’ve invested everything in a future that was completely unknown and untouched.
In the evening we were having some firefighters / policemen with ultimate Scottish accent that everybody just enjoys but couldn’t understand. Before that, a Taiwanese guy showed up and said, we’re going to Karaoke after this, you want to join?
Internally I screamed, thank you you saved my birthday! While in reality, I politely replied with my awful hairstyle and my symbolic smile,
“of course, I’d love to.”
I remembered him waiting for me for more than 30 minutes before the Karaoke called him. I finally joined one hour later.
My 30th birthday remedy was with 5 Taiwanese. Strangers automatically group together by ethnicity. Then by interests. Like two entrance exams. But neither ethnicity nor interest is the key to keep friendship. The 5 singing Taiwanese, however, are still my very good friends.
I picked the songs that most Taiwanese haven’t heard of. In the end I told one of them, it’s actually my birthday today. They came to hug me. One by one. All happy faces. Juliette, Jimi, Andy, Jack and Lynn.
I think I shed a tear but nobody noticed that.
Then the day was over. A quiet, packed, refrained, boring, and abstinently emotional birthday.
I posted Instagram 10 minutes after that day and said, “look! I did it! I didn’t celebrate my 30’s birthday, did you notice? Hello?”
Well well well.
That timid version of bad-hair me would never know how things later evolved, how I’ve unveiled my romantically commercial and vibrant life-changing year by hitting “PAUSE” on my 30’s.
maoa 