Last week, I said goodbye to one of the greatest (secret) loves of my life.

Last week, I watched a girl ponder over an exotic Russian and a familiar New Yorker.

Last week, Carrie Bradshaw did her last walk in her beloved Manolos.

The end of "Sex and the City." 

I remember the time I watched my first-ever SATC episode. It was when Aidan, the sweet-talking, always-caring and never-lying, otherwise known as the too-good-to-be-perfect man, was in Carrie’s life. After being absorbed by her friends, her shoes, her laments, her laptop and her life in general, the first conscious thought that came to my mind was, I want that life when I’m 30. What more could a girl possibly want? She had a tight posse of girlfriends who were free almost all the time for an impromptu brunch/lunch/dinner/cocktail date, too many pairs of shoes and fabulous clothes to keep count, a job that seemed to provide her with all the leniency and creativity she needed (a weekly sex column), and a flock of men that always seemed well-groomed, well-mannered, and well-suited.

Yet she kept on screwing up. Problems never seized to exist. Her life was nowhere being perfect.

That was what made the show so enticing. All the imperfections of her life - all the men she couldn’t and didn’t want to have, all the agony she faced for stepping in and out of singledom, all the dilemma her friends were facing, and all the times she just couldn’t make up her mind between the ever-so-seductive (and stylish, never looking foolish with a cigar) Big and all the other guys that entered her life.

And it all felt so damn real.

Sure, the girl was older, living a life of a career woman. She was definitely much, much richer than I was (and am), somehow managing to own an apartment, go out to eat almost all the time and shopping endlessly all on just a weekly column. She had many men in her life, a number of them rich and significant. (I can’t possibly say the same about myself, although I would love to) But despite all the discrepancies, I could relate to her. When Big kept on stepping around the fringes of commitment, which killed her inside but made him look attractive at the same time, I knew exactly what she was going through. When Aidan was treating Carrie with model behaviour like every perfect boyfriend should, and yet she just couldn’t resist Big’s appeal and cheated on him, I understood her. And when her friends and her common sense tried to stop her from going to Paris with a man she adored, knowing it would go wrong, and still she stubbornly stuck to the ideal romanticism she built up all the way to France, it made perfect sense to me. Carrie Bradshaw was the representative of single girls everywhere: too paranoid to tell if the liking was mutual, too indecisive for commitment, and too nostalgic towards the wrong guy.

That’s why during the finale, when Big (the eternal playboy with that deathly charm who’s never fully trustworthy, but is just so right) finally met up with her in Paris and told her in that deserted street that she was ‘the one’, it was just the way that was meant to be.

She will continue to have problems. There will always be that niche of discontentment and discomfort, moving on to a new phase of maturity and experiencing less availability from herself and her friends.

But she will no longer be single. Hence, the appropriate end of one eventful era that will be missed by millions of viewers everywhere.

I will always cherish the four spunky single girls, the laptop that always had only one line of a pivotal question, Carrie’s ever-evolving hairstyle and (sometimes wacky) clothes, and of course, the mischievous Big (or John) that delivered ‘abso-f-ing-lutely’ with a confident swagger in his voice. And if I ever get too nostalgic, there are always the DVD sets to fall back on. Well that, like Carrie would say, is just fabulous.

(Photo obtained from Sex and the City website: http://www.hbo.com/city/ )