Piano Bridge

Yesterday, shortly after dusk, I cried on a bridge.

It’s a bridge connecting the two islands on River Seine, Cité and Ile Saint-Louis. A bright yellow upright piano, not a very tall one, stood in the middle of the bridge, with the keyboard facing one island, and the pianist facing the other.

I’m not sure if it’s the same “piano bridge” in my memory. As I was living in Paris 5 years ago. One day, in dazzling sunlight, I went across a bridge with somebody playing an upright piano on it. Another piano painted with playful colors. Maybe yellow as well.

That day was so bright that my memory was so vague.

Hi again, piano bridge.

This time the pianist was playing a classic. Something in the form of a Chopin or Liszt. Fast fingers, shorter chapters, quick changes of tones, sounds of tender waterfalls or the milky galaxy moving away. I listened to the notes that went across to one island, and bounced back to the other, wound the bridge several times and dissipated into the cold Parisian winter.

In the background, La Panthéon was lit up. The sky was precisely indigo blue which sets on my hair and shoulders, and spawn my negligible drops of tears.

Everything was tranquil. As my heart goes, I didn’t have anything that hung above me to cry for. No stress, no cravings, no hope, no fear. Nothing. At least not within the 5 minutes I stood there. I felt completed like a blue-and-white porcelain vase, withholding hundred years of love, affection, intricacy, softeners, waves.

But that feeling faded within an instant. Jia asked me, what did you have in mind when you bursted into tears. With her wet eyes, she stared at me.

I said nothing. She said, oh it reminded me the first time I was touched by something totally irrelevant by it’s mere beauty.

And she told a story. I said nothing.

I didn’t have anything in mind. I don’t even remember the first time I was touched by something irrelevant by it’s mere beauty.

It’s a good thing to be back in Paris.

Pausing 30 (1)

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.

To all the dead love

The moment I realized this is done, a drop of water from my heart fell into a well.

This relationship. I’ll never hear from him again, in the voice of a date. But I might hear from him again, regarding something else, which makes it worse to imagine. 

The well is so deep, that I waited, waited, waited, waited, waited. I cannot hear it —- the sound of my drop fell into the embraces of other water drops.

The distance it travels is the depth of my dead love.

You can see that like a drop of tear. Of me. This time falling in love. And now it is in a place where all the past times of me, and probably that of a million other women, gathered in the form of water. 

I no longer need to post anything on Instagram simply because I want to let him see it and, maybe if he feels like, he will send me a message. I unintentionally connived this habit.

But he won’t. I’m done with him. He gets it.

I unfollowed him. Long ago. So now his name can only show up at the bottom of my stories’ viewer list. And I’ve learned the pattern that, the more bottom he gets, the earlier he has seen the story. But why do I always make the effort to scroll down to the bottom to see if he has viewed this or not?!

I even learned his timetable of the day by checking his name at the bottom of my stories. If I don’t see it in 1 hour, oh he is asleep, oh he is having fun with his girl and other people. Oh, he is just a rich man with a retired lifestyle. I’m an energetic social human with a huge potential to become big therefore the thing between us is a no-go. 

But I’m jealous. I can’t help. Both of the lifestyle, and of his accompany. 


Love, jealousy, and anger. Someone said these three always go together. And somewhere from the dead love’s well (sometimes I feel standing in front of a thousand wells waiting for me to drown), come these endless bad intentions and arbitrary conclusions about him, his lovely partner, me, this world, the connection we’ve had.

“Maybe I was too pushy. I fell for him too fast. I told him too much. I lost control of myself. Or I controlled myself too much from the outside. He was just trying to be nice. There should be a dozen women before me that had fantasized to save him from his seemingly boring relationship. No, it’s not boring. It’s just very stable. He got a girl that admires him and puts all her attention on him. But she can probably also be herself. That perfectly-Asian Japanese girl. 

I cannot be myself. At least nobody ever gave me the chance to.

I won’t put all my attention on him either. I have my career. No. I don’t want to. No. I want to but I cannot.

How pathetic I am! Why do smart women like me want to exploit ourselves and make an impact in the world? Why can’t the world just appreciate our hardworking and take it the way it is? Why can’t the rest of the world acknowledge the wealth of China? Is new money always being despised, so we are naturally so much worse than the Japanese? She can appreciate art, but me too! I can drink much more than she can. She looks so ordinary but I’m amazingly smart… But she looks much more innocent than me, it’s true…”

This goes on and on and on.

My friend Joanna said, don’t judge yourself with “wrong”. It’s too harsh. 

And somewhere in the movies, someone shouted at the protagonist, “Your whole life, you think you’re better than others! Look at where you are!”

“Ok, let’s forget about all that shit. Stop judging myself and where I’m from. This is just really bad timing.”

I talked to myself.

Because I just came back to Paris and have been trying to make my business work by living in France. I’m a foreigner without a long-term stay nor a European boyfriend that I can trade my body for the visa. 

Then I realized that every time I fell for someone with these frenzies, “this is bad timing”, I repeatedly told myself. I have to leave. I cannot handle the crave. BAD TIMING.

Maybe it’s not. It’s not bad timing at all. It’s just something “wrong” in my mind, that I longed for this type of pain, the strong emotions that could bury me alive, to feel energized and to live again. If I cannot handle it, I make up excuses to run away. 

Life itself is like a well. It’s not worth it without heartfelt emotions that release the beasts inside you. I should have been an actress. I need strong emotions to stay lively.

My deadly romantic ego tells me.

No no no no no no no.
I’m done. I can’t live like this anymore.

I like being girly. But with wisdom and experience. I’ve failed 3 times over the past 8 years. In 3 different cities. 3 different nationalities. Same story. I used to think I’m the kind of person that could always learn from mistakes and change the way I behave. Because I’m a quick learner. But apparently I’m not. From this time to last time, it’s been 5 years. I simply forgot how heartbreaking it was. It’s like mothers usually forget how painful they gave birth to the babies. Bad analogy. I only gave birth to pains, and painful lessons for life.

So no matter how hard it is. This time. I’m done with looking for painful emotions within my crazy affection for some guy. These guys, they are all wild, present, wildly good-looking, present everything with style and comments. They are all strong souls.

Me too. I’m a strong soul.

Maybe it comes with age. All of a sudden, I realized that I can have relationships that makes me calm and sensible.

So I started on Dating Apps and try to chat with people. In French.

This almost ideal person should be like —- When I spend time with him, I feel the time is well spent WHATEVER I DO. Not whatever he does. Whatever I do. I don’t need to care a single cent about how he judges my moves. If I want to keep quiet, he won’t mind. I can do stupid things to make him laugh, or mock. If I get stressed and want to lock myself up in a room. He will pat me on the shoulder and say, it’s fine, and it will be fine.
Then I grab a cup of tea, and we sit down for some no-brainer SitComs. 

I’ll take my emotional trials somewhere else. Maybe in the articles, maybe with coffee, maybe with song-writing.

Change the exit. Find another exit to release the beasts. Experiment until my needs are properly satisfied, or maybe they will get tired longing for the satisfaction. And I’ll save the best for the ones that would really keep me company. 

By whatever means.

After all, springs hibernate in wells.

As I just checked my Instagram again, this time he liked my champagne tasting post. I didn’t open my stories and scroll down.

But I still want to thank you. And all those who made me crazy in love and had to fleet to save myself. 

I love you.