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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Day 235: Self Destruct Program - What if You survive It?

When I was young my mum told me tales about my eccentric father who used to say he believed he would die by when he was 33, like Jesus, but he didn't and had to face being here and having accomplished nothing with his life of lies and deceit.

I had another friend that used to tell me how she would die young, and she didn't.

For myself I never thought about that in the specific, about when I would die, but I started self destructing programs to make sure I did quite at an early age.

My first experience with drinking happened when I was a kid in my grandma's home, they had a liquor cabinet and one night when everyone had gone to bed, I opened it and took a sip out of each bottle, there were about 7 or 8, from sweet liquors to whiskies. After the 4th sip I was tipsy, after the 8th I was sick, went to bed and as I lay there my head started to turn and turn until I felt like falling in a black hole so I sat up on the side of the bed where I felt all the alcohol come up but did not make it to the bathroom, instead I threw up on my bedsheets and as clever kids do, I unmade the bed, took all the sheet to the small laundry room put them into the bathtub, open the water to cover them and went back to bed sick as a dog.

Amazing how sick as I was my first thought was to not ruin the bedsheets because THAT would have made grandma Really angry, the plan seemed faultless too, the next morning I would take them out of the bathtub and make my bed again and nobody would be the wiser (??)...

In the morning my grandma woke me up and asked me what happened the night before. 'Nothing', I remember her looking at me in silence and then she said 'where are your bedsheets?' and then the fog cleared a bit but I would have liked to deny some more if she hadn't said that she walked into the laundry and a smell of alcohol (and puke) was coming out of there. 

She laughed too, she said it was normal for kids to want to experiment and made no big deal about it, she said luckily grandpa was not at home, it would be 'our little secret'. 

I did not enjoy the aftermath, I was out of whack for a few days and didn't drink to that level for a few good years to come.

When I was in my first year of high school we went to a party, I suggested we buy some Sambuca and at the party I pushed everyone to drink straight from the bottles, the party ended when some friend put me on the bus and took my to my best girlfriend who worked at an hairdresser shop, I was crying and stood outside of her window, she run out to discover I was just drunk and told me to wait and we would go home together when she was done. I cried all the way back home on the bus, while I told out loud my 'sad story' and when we got home and my mum saw me she told me 'go to bed or I'll kill you' but she didn't kill me, not even the next day.

My family run on hidden self destruct programs, no one had the guts to take a position when I first played out what had been going on in secret within all their lives.

Alcohol had consequences though, headaches, depression, and lousy after parties, it was when I discovered pot that I envision self destruction with no consequences, as IF, and embraced that lifestyle with a passion.

It was only later in life that I realized my Pot habit did come with consequences too, BIG ones, as I spent most of my life off the planet and at every landing I would have to fix whatever I had destroyed, attempted to destroy or was in the process of destroying, some things I couldn't even fix afterward, they were just done and gone for good.

I have given up pot, but not this habit to self destruct, it comes in subtly, one damaging action at the time that I excuse, disregard, brush away, until I am in full blown self destruct mode.

One point that fuels this is that I still hold a definition of Life having no value, I have already written about waking up from some of my binges and discovering with dismay that I was still here, yesterday as I walked home and looked at this point I realized I harbor guilt as well, for not having developed some sickness like diabetes, because I have lived a life leading there or something else, it's like I can't match the gratefulness I should feel for the resilience of my body, it's too big a debt, it's too late, I will never be able to repay my body for all of the abuse I put it through and so what do I do, ironically? I'll do some more to prove that I was not worth saving, let me go please, just to wake up in my groundhog life, another bloody day.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, when I was a kid and I experimented with alcohol to the point of making myself sick not see, realize and understand that I was playing out the hidden patterns of self destruction of my family and for believing that the desire to Self destruct was who I really am

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, when I was a kid, imprint myself with the idea that I was the desire to rebel and to associate self destruction to an idea of rebellion, of not wanting to fit in, and that by self destructing I was asserting myself and my right to 'do as I pleased' no matter the consequences

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have a memory of my grandmother and my mother excusing my first experiences with alcohol to the point of utter sickness, as something benevolent and merciful that happened that made me believe they loved me because they did not punish me, instead of seeing and realizing that as I played out the self destructive hidden patterns of my family, the response of my family members had nothing to do with me and was not a point of closeness, of camaraderie, of intimacy that we shared and as such 'good and positive' but just a moment in which nobody knew how to behave as we all faced the same patterns with no solutions

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to connect alcohol abuse, smoking pot, doing drugs and generally having Mind altering experiences with Fun, with Freedom, with transgression, as if the fact that I could do those things as much as I wanted whenever I wanted was a testimony to my grown-up-ness and a point I should cherish because it meant I established myself as an adult, however dysfunctional, instead of seeing and realizing I just played out self destruction and excesses in no way differently than my family members and I was just a copy cat of behaviors past

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, when both my grandma and my mum excused me and found funny that I got so drunk that I couldn't connect clearly, to think and believe that getting so out of your mind that you can't connect it's fun and something to look forward to and for harboring the desire to 'let loose' as a reward for the constrictive life I perceived myself to live, I forgive myself

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to think, believe, say and affirm, that Life has no Value, when in fact I have never lived but as a Mind, and for separating myself from the physical to the point of hatred for this earthly experience -which I have never experienced for real in and as the physical- I forgive myself

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel disappointment and regret for being here, for surviving each and every attempt at self destruction, for feeling sorry that I did not manage to give myself some life threatening sicknesses, to prove that I had been successful in at least one of my programs, self destruction, and for feeling the failure of being alive as having failed to self destruct, I forgive myself

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that Life is short and we better enjoy it, and within this mean engage in activities of excesses, of Mind altering moments that I perceived as a break from this reality and for creeping into this Character every time I see my life as dull or as not going anywhere, I forgive myself

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, when and as I see myself moving the first steps into this Character play, to deliberately look away, excuse it, pretend it's not happening, so that I can take the full slide into the full blown experience of this Character and then land back to just return to the disappointment for being still here and too healthy for what I believe I would deserve

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, when I read posts of some of us battling with chronic sicknesses, first move into guilt for not being sick regardless of what I have done to get there and then feel ashamed because I am the one who lived to get sick and I didn't and I believe I have once again overstepped a line with no consequences charged and for desiring the suffering and punishing for the Characters allowed myself to play I forgive myself

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to desire to get sick to use the sickness as a fail safe to stop my self destructive behavior because I accepted and allowed myself to believe that people change their destructive habits only if they fear dying, but I don't have this fear and as such I have not moved so far, instead of seeing and realizing that I don't need fear to motivate me to move but a self directive decision I stick to with the same diligence I used, to stick to my self destructive patterns until I change

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not see realize and understand, that my belief that 'people don't change' which is made of the sum of all the things I heard about it, read about it, discussions I had about it, until I gave in and accepted and allowed myself to believe 'people don't change', was always and just a justification about why I could not change, so I could stick to the habits through which I defined myself no matter how damaging the habits were and for not seeing, realizing and understanding that I can change if I stand as self directive principle of my change and not the excuse of why I can't, I forgive myself

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to hold onto memories of all my failed changes, of when I tried to give up pot and I could not for so many times, of all the commitments I made about giving up pot and then deserted while I have conveniently Not filed the point that I did give up pot at one point in my life, because that would mean I changed and I can't have changed because I told myself I couldn't change and nobody can, and for desiring to hold on to self destructive habits for the purpose of remaining within the comfort of my self definitions, characters and personalities, I forgive myself

Self commitments to follow

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