Confessions of a Cat-holic (228)

Later I discovered on Apple Daily that Derek was a frequent visitor of the night club Magnum when I saw his face on news about Magnum's IPO. But he was serious when he was with me. He actually told me a lot of personal stuff about his family when we dated. He said he was looking for a wife when he asked me out. Everything looked so perfect and undeniably desirable. Why couldn't I feel any romantic tickling with him? I sometimes thought that I was out of my mind as well. I yelled at Derek when I broke up with him, he couldn't stand it and I asked to break up, again and again. Sometimes I thought that maybe I should just remain single forever.

I experienced a series of mental break downs after I was laid off from Lehman. There was a coworker in my office from Taiwan who kind of expressed interests in me. I didn't want to have intra office romance so I didn't make any moves. After I received the notice that I would be laid off from Lehman, I thought maybe I should date this guy in my office after he invited me to go to Thailand with him. But it was very strange, I could not trust anyone anymore after I experienced the heartbreak with Eddie. Hearing love stories about how bankers regularly had paid sex in the brothels from my co-workers at Lehman, I was very afraid of catching STDs from them. I also had a feeling that they would not want to get married with me, despite their confessions of looking for a wife when asking me out.

So I thought I might as well just stay single and figure out what kind of guys I might be interested in. After staying single for a while, I just got used to being on my own without a boyfriend. I already had my own career, I had my own family, I lived with my parents. I really might not need another guy to mess up my life anymore. At first, I felt a bit lonely. But after a while, I had no bad feelings at all being called a leftover.

It took me around 2 years when I had a career break in Beijing to realize that maybe I should never get back to finance. First of all, the up or out culture was very cutthroat. It wouldn't suit my laid back personality. Also I experienced depression symptoms. I could no longer function as well as before my Morgan Stanley internship. I had a very hard time handling daily casual tasks such as filling out my tax return forms. I wanted to just hide in Beijing and not face my circle of friends from Hong Kong anymore. I wouldn't think there would be any angels willing to date a depressed version of me, who looked nothing like I used to back when I was in college. After all, I was a complete failure. Even after I applied and got accepted for the JD programs from CUHK and HKU, I had to turn it down because I doubted if I had the mental capacity to handle the workload of a professional master degree.

Maybe this poem could express my feelings.

曾經滄海難爲水，除卻巫山不是雲。取次花叢懶回顧，半緣修道半緣君。

This time it was not about the wet ass pussy with a pus anymore. Literally, none of the guys I met after my break up with Eddie was comparable with him. So Eddie was that vast ocean and he made others look like a swamp. I had the chance to have dated other guys, but I didn't feel like getting intimate with them anymore. I didn't want to compromise and have casual flings which I might regret later on. Partly it was that I still missed Eddie. Partly it was that I wanted to just keep myself away from the dusty world.

I was still missing Eddie. But the fact that he didn't bother to message or call me after break up left me with little hopes of getting back together with him. Then again, I really didn't want to risk my health by dating someone new either. I started to slowly walk out completely from my circle of friends among the Ivy League students in Hong Kong. The circle really was that small. I was perhaps the very few who dropped out and ended up working as a tutor of a salary close to a Filipino maid. Maybe I had always been a clown in my peers' eyes. I felt very upset in the beginning; but like many other things, I got used to it as time went by.