December 26

The 26th of December came and went but it has changed me so profoundly that I consider this as a new life.

It rained the entire morning, in heavy downpour, rain hammered our roofs. Our parents were out and being the old sister, I was responsible for the entire household. Imagine the burden on me when flood started to rise and entered our gates. I had to save my brothers and our possessions. I did my share of lifting – TV sets, encyclopedias, couch, tables, everything. Our dogs, Pau-pau and Ericson, were perched on the jeep. Paul stayed on the penetralium of our terrace while Jam-jam and her puppies had to be evacuated upstairs. Mom came and Dad and I felt safe but then the flood rose very quickly. By six p.m. the waters were 5 ft. deep.

We stayed in the second floor of our house but there was a fear in me, what if the waters rise so high and reach us?

I stayed up until 1 a.m. like a watchdog. Checking the water level every fifteen minutes. Making sure I’ll be able to save my dogs if ever the waters reach the roof of the jeep, but it didn’t. I was trembling in both cold and fear and images of my entire family perched on our roof, our things being soaked in the flood and our dogs drowning.

The waters continued to rise and friends started to check up if I’m okay, if I’m alive after they heard the news that the entire city was flooded, blacked-out. I cried out of fear.

I can say that my entire life flashed before me. Emotional trauma?

Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of things and experiences that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Since then, I have changed, drastically. Of the ways, I still can’t explain but I know something clicked within, and I am changed. After that flood I don’t want to go back. How do you watch something slowly disappear? How do you cope with it? I realized that you lose and lose and keep on losing. So much leaked out of me. There is an indifference, a selfishness, an insensitivity in me that was so ugly I cannot bear to confront it or even admit it and I saw it that night, in the dark, my feet cold and in pain.