In Between Worlds

I disabled my Instagram account recently.

Funny that I had to be brave to do it because it is not normal. You are supposed to start an Instagram account, not disabling it. It’s almost like erasing yourself from history and society. But the truth is I am more present of my own life now than I first started participating in social media since the Flickr days.

Disabled the account doesn’t mean it’s been deleted though. The second I log back in, my account would return. So there’s still strings attached, but it is enough for me to understand what or why I stayed on the platform.

I haven’t missed knowing what my friends did over the weekend or the latest world news or inspirational quotes. If I’m wondering about a friend, I can just call or text them. If there’s big news, someone will fill me in. Finding inspiration to uplift me, I’ll read a book. What I don’t have the courage to delete is the history of posts and tags that show I was relevant or successful. Picture of me with Michelle Obama at The White House, being featured in different magazines, hung out with cool people in the industry, giving talks at different events…

Are you ready to let go? Can you really let go?

In case you don’t know my backstory already, I grew up being told that I was never going to be good enough for anything. Since little, I had to proof my worth and was always seeking validation, so I was trained very well in creating a persona. That persona was funny, confident, cool, and outgoing. It worked out in the creative industry I’m in. I remember the one fear when I first met my current husband was what he would find about Bonnie Tsang on the internet, so I told him not to search my name on Google. Because that’s not the real me.

To live in truth and slowly rewiring my behavior and belief system, and then to go on social media to sell a persona that brought income has been a struggle. To find my balance is a struggle, I don’t know how to live in both worlds. At least for now, I don’t know how. Let me train myself to become Neo or Trinity from The Matrix and I’ll get back to you on that.

Then I stumbled onto this interview with Guy Ritchie, which gave me some idea of how to approach the topic—

He said don’t hate the game, love the game because you’re in it. My soul signed up for this, otherwise I would be living a life where there’s no ego, desires, wants and needs. The family that I grew up in, my parents, my introvertedness, the struggles are tools to help me play this game. I have an advantage in dealing with hardships. And I now have a new advantage - to know what is true and what is from the ego. Like Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, maybe it’s time to make the sword whole again and head back into the battlefield.

"Very bright was that sword when it was made whole again; the light of the sun shone redly in it, and the light of the moon shone cold, and its edge was hard and keen. And Aragorn gave it a new name and called it Andúril, Flame of the West."