Day 373: Letting Hong Kong go

The Chinese characters for "Hong Kong". (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As I wrote the title of this blog I felt a sense of sadness, a sense of loss.

Hong Kong has been the peak of my professional value and somehow of my personal value as well.

It is where, according to my mind, I shone the most, I was at my best, the world at my feet, I was slim, attractive, well dressed, connected to all the right people and earning a lot of money. In addition I was independent with a full time helper and the freedom to travel around the world at my fingertips.

What my mind always forgets to bring up when throwing memories in my face at all apparently random moments is the downside of it, I was never really happy in a stable way in my lifetime, when I was in Hong Kong I was either high or tipsy all the way to drunk.

I was bulimic and would spend Sundays roaming aimlessly inside supermarkets and gourmet shops looking for enticing but cheap food because I knew I would eat it and then throw it up, I had given myself up to my mind completely, I didn't even try to fight it any more, my life was a life of damage-management.

And yet, whenever Hong Kong comes up in my mind it is to highlight the glamour, the 'good side of it all', the food I loved, my sense of having successfully impersonated somebody competent but this is they key word 'impersonating', so however others perceived me, that was never how I experienced myself, instead I always felt overstretched between worlds, the one where I came from and the one where I had landed myself, always stressed at the idea that it could all fall apart and that I would be outed as an impostor, because I couldn't, shouldn't have been able to make that jump, ever, where I was born and my life history could have only led me to an average life, my Hong Kong life was way above who I believed myself to be or could ever be and this stretch, this attempt to stretch myself beyond my self imposed limitation kept me on my toes and at a level of anxiety that at the time I could only medicate with pot and with pretending that all was really fine, as I hung to positive thinking looking for that relief that I could not have from my mind.
Switching it off never seemed an option, maybe I could pivot it -as Abraham Hicks said-, I thought at the time, pivot my thoughts into something else, oblivious to the fact that none of it was real and that the essential experience of myself, sadly, remained.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that Hong Kong had a value that I could try and squeeze out of it for myself instead of seeing, realizing and understanding, that it was me divesting some of my value, some of my substance, to Hong Kong and then attempt to get it back by living Hong Kong as me

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, when images and memories of enticing Hong Kong pop up in my mind, to not question why my mind is offering that specific hook in that specific moment but instead take the hook all the way into regret for having left a city I believed I loved so much

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that it was Hong Kong that made me feel special and better than how I felt in other places in my life, instead of seeing realizing and understanding that there was nothing special in Hong Kong but the sum of the values of the things I have been valuing in my life and that instead of taking Hong Kong as my opportunity to break free, I dived into it believing that I had arrived, that that was My city, my place -and not just a place like any other where I just happened to come face to face with the divested values of myself

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to suppress the truth about my real experience of Hong Kong, such as how I really experienced myself as lonely, sad, weak and addicted, as the puppet of my own mind without seeing, realizing and understanding that things got to where they got through my participation in the 'positive thinking' movement, that while it enhanced on the surface all the good, kept in the backstage all the negative, the bad, which grew to a point where my anxiety reached a level of unsustainability and I had to leave the city

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to suppress and deny my experience of myself while in Hong Kong because I had previously manifested my dis-ease with this world, with life in general and my place in it and had been told to 'chin up' hence I wanted to find one place in the world where I did fit in, where I did not keep experiencing myself in such a negative oppressive way and I turned Hong Kong into this positive place for myself, one place in the world where I could believe I fitted in so as not to feel like such a misfit for the rest of my life

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that making one place in the world 'my perfect place' came with a price tag, which was that the rest of the world could never be my perfect place because that place was already assigned and within this for creating within myself a polarity between Hong Kong and the rest of the world with the result that when I came back to Italy or I moved to Thailand I was forced to live in my 'not favorite place' and within that for creating unnecessary anxiety for myself regarding my placement in the world that should always be equal and not matter at all

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fall into the depth of a self created depression when I came back to Italy because I faced the perception of a fall from grace, where grace was Hong Kong and Italy was a shit hole by comparison as I failed to see, realize and understand that a place is just a place and everything I experience within it, within me is of my own making 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that I was suddenly less, worth-less since I came back to Italy because I no longer had the relationship of positive energy I had imbued myself and Hong Kong with, tying together myself to a city in search of a stability that I never reached there or anywhere else, as I failed to see, realize and understand that I mySelf must become my own stability and nothing else outside of me that can be taken away, cease to exist or simply reveal itself for what it always was, a place no different from any other but just overcharged with my own 'positive energy investments'

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to perceive and feel a sense of loss at the idea that I may never be able to go back to Hong Kong in fear that I will never feel as positive as I felt when I was there, while hiding from myself the whole truth about those times, when I was sad, addicted, bulimic and lonely

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel ashamed about being lonely, sad, addicted and bulimic and for suppressing those truths so that I could keep up the image of the accomplished business woman and get kudos points for myself from others within the hope to gain a value for myself that I perceived I never had

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to make mental lists of the many reasons why I loved Hong Kong without seeing, realizing and understanding that everything that was on my list was always a point of positive energetic feedback in which I perceived an increase of value for myself and that the solution cannot be to return to where I divested my value but to return to myself the value I have divested over time over this particular city

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I was worth-less on my return to Italy because I perceived the lack of all my positive energy props about Hong Kong, failing to see realize and understand that I never lived in that city for real and I know for sure because when I saw for the first time the documentary Hong Kong cage dwellers or the plight of the migrant maids and their abuses, I was shocked as I never knew this reality even existed under my very eyes and this is the proof that I have hovered over Hong Kong in my position of privilege and not lived there within all its dimension at all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I would never be the same as I was in Hong Kong as in sharp, well adjusted and successful instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that those definition of myself where definitions of myself as The Mind and they had no foundation in reality as I can see, realize and understand that I have never lived those words as myself but as a system within a system and one of the reasons why I felt well adjusted was because I had successfully managed to stop questioning reality and some of the friction that I used to feel due to questioning reality and the purpose of our existence subsided, as I successfully accepted that this reality finally worked for me and that all questioning should end, submitting myself to myself as the Mind and my own deluded self definitions

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to invest value in another culture as a way to escape mine, which seemed belittling to me by comparison to the vastness of the oriental culture, instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that a culture is just a cult and that when I started digging into the Chinese one I found many similarities to mine because all cultures are limiting, judgemental and oppressive and within this that I did not see realize and understand that I was trying to break free from my own limits, judgements and oppressions by projecting the judgement about them outside, on my culture, on what cultivated me from embryo into adulthood instead of taking responsibility for myself about breaking free from my preprogrammed and self programmed limiting existence

When and as I see myself long for Hong Kong, desire to be there, regret that I have ever left or about to do any of such things, I stop, breathe, see realize and understand that I am clear about what was valuable about Hong Kong and that was my own energetic investment in it and I can realign myself by taking it all back to delete it and my ties to this city for good

When and as I see myself projecting to myself happy moments in Hong Kong as a way to remind myself of my utter failure to lift myself out of this country, my past and my culture, I stop, breathe, see realize and understand that there is nothing wrong with Italy per se and I can take back all judgements and self judgements about myself and Italy in relation to each other so that my experience here doesn't have to be a struggle but can become just like anywhere else, where I can work toward being stable so I can really focus on what matters

When and as I see myself indulging or about to indulge in a moment of sadness for what I lost, I stop, breathe, see realize and understand that I have lost nothing but an energetic feedback from my own investment from my own years spent substantiating Hong Kong as being more than somewhere else and special and breath by breath make sure that here is nothing left tying me to this city as any ties means I am in fact Not Free

I commit myself to let Hong Kong go for good

I commit myself to, whenever a though, a memory, a feeling comes up within me or is about to come up about Hong Kong, to flag it so that I can remind myself that I have walked my SF in relation to this point and my SCS and I just need to now walk them into the physical to make the severing of this ties real and for good

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