A Stormy Beginning

It’s what Bruce Wayne’s father said to him after a traumatic event: "Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”
No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. The winners pick themselves up and learn from their mistakes. It’s what you do after you make a mistake that shows character.

I came in from the cold, wet and lightless. "Milenyo" unleashed powerful winds and rain that left Manila's streets a virtual no man's land. There was no escape from its fury. I didn't feel any safer inside my building. The storm was beating down the glass walls and windows. The floor was trembling from the sheer might of the elements. Emergency light flickered while an uneasy dampness slowly blanketed the place.

There was no stopping the storm. Walls and windows fell down from their frames and carpeted the floor with glass shards. Navigating the halls meant skipping one spot to another to avoid sharp edges. The elevators were useless. I looked up the flights of stairs, twenty four sets of them, before I could reach my place. The climb to the top, without light and broken glass everywhere, was risky but a better prospect than staying with strangers in a dark, rain-drenched lobby.

Lightning lit the the angry skies. Amid the blue capillaries of light, one step at a time, I slowly made my way up. On the seventh floor, my thighs were aching but there was no rest. I pushed myself forward. Being alone and in the middle of a storm gave me pause, a fleeting reflection of my own worst fears, and triggered a fight-or-flight response.

In this case, I was fleeing. Looking around, I am reminded of a scene straight out of Batman Begins. A young Bruce Wayne fell into a deep hole, and opened his eyes to disturbed, gruesome, winged creatures that became his greatest fear. They inhabited his nightmares. We all know worst things had yet to come, like losing your parents in one night, murdered in cold blood, and abandoned with their lifeless bodies.

Same scenes of dark halls and stormy skies surrounded me when I got a knock on my dormitory door at a Church compound, back when I'm attending university in Manila. Hours before dawn, I was roused from my sleep, and I was surprised to see my uncle allowed to go as far as my room. He was crying when he laboriously told me my father passed on during the night, and he was taking me home. I did not believe him, until I saw my father in a coffin at a chapel near home.

On Sunday afternoon, I was playing hoops with him. He was alive and kicking. Monday morning before dawn, he's gone. From this point on, like Wayne's first blows with towering fear and death, I knew life would never be the same. There was no turning back.

Back in my ascent to my place, driven by the crashing sound and gloomy lights of powerful "Milenyo", I snapped out of my reverie. More glass windows came tumbling down the floors, and I could see tree leaves and trunks whirling around outside. A few more steps, a struggle to my door, a frantic search for the light, and cocooning in my bed, lifted my spirits.

My aching thighs and numb feet didn't matter anymore. The blood from cuts I received during my climb had dried. The pallor in my room was still a welcome a sight. Through it all, and though the experience indelibly changed me, I'm good. I'm home.