I Flew to Paris to Remove a Love Lock

For about a week, I had been feeling stuck, and I couldn’t shake it. I wouldn’t say I was depressed, but I wasn’t feeling like myself either. I was bored, restless, and tired of sitting around feeling the same way. I thought about flying to New York or Miami, but nothing in the U.S. sounded exciting to me.

I just wanted to go somewhere far away, even if it was only for twenty-four hours.

Paris came to mind for two reasons. I had been craving the banana dessert from Cédric Grolet for months, and there was a love lock I had placed on Passerelle Debilly in 2022.

Back then, I was in Paris with someone I was in a relationship with. We did what thousands of tourists do when they visit the city. We wrote our names on a padlock, attached it to the bridge, and threw a key into the Seine. The idea is that the lock represents a love that will last forever.

I kept one of the keys. I still don’t know why, because keeping it didn’t mean I doubted our relationship or expected it to end. At the time, I believed in the love we had and in the future I thought we were building.

The relationship eventually ended after I learned that he had cheated on me and gotten another woman pregnant. She later gave birth to twins. After everything came out, that lock no longer represented love to me. It represented a moment with someone who was no longer in my life.

Call me superstitious, but I think love locks are a curse. I don’t like the idea of trying to lock love into place and throwing away the key. People stay together because they continue choosing one another, not because their names are attached to a bridge somewhere in Paris.

I’m in a different season of my life now, and my relationship with my current partner is entering another phase. I didn’t want that old lock attached to a memory with someone from my past while I was moving forward with the person in my life now. The relationship had ended, but our names were still locked together somewhere in Paris as if nothing had changed.

I wanted to remove it because I didn’t want to feel like I was holding on to a memory or a moment with someone who was no longer in my life.

Friday night, I booked the flight.

I arrived in Paris at around 5:00 p.m. and checked into my room at the Pullman Hotel. I ordered room service, opened the window, and spent the evening watching the Eiffel Tower twinkle from my room.