of
Isolation
Today is Black Saturday. The world, it seems, has emptied itself of noise.
One by one, the other boarders packed their bags, their laughter trailing behind them as they returned to their provinces for the long Holy Week break.
Their footsteps faded down the corridor, leaving behind a deafening silence.
It's been two days since they were all gone. And here I am, left alone in this quiet boarding house in Sampaloc, Manila, sitting on the side of my bed, doing nothing, only witnessing the slow passage of time.
At twenty-five years old, I find myself wandering inward, reaching into the dim corners of my mind to gather fragments, half-remembered voices and fleeting images that echo from the days of my youth.
But even if those early years feel far away, I hold on to them, for in this deep and persistent quiet, I know memory is my only kind companion.
Let the past unfold before me now, so I can tell my story, even if there are only walls to listen.
In this way, it may help ease the loneliness and the unsettling heaviness in my chest, even if only for a while.
So, here goes my story:
I grew up in a place where everyone could literally loiter just everywhere.
My environment was not just a setting, it was a living, breathing invitation for an adventure. Rural. Carefree. Laidback. Untamed.
The open field stretched out like a promise. The natural world presented on all sides, and the slow pace of life in the province, was waiting to be explored. It gave freedom, so complete, that most children couldn't describe it now.
These memories don't just come back to me, they come hauntingly. They slowly drift like a morning mist in the still moments, pulling me back with a tender grip. Back to a time when my mind didn't find reason. I just did whatever it was to wander about. I walked. I ran. Even barefooted, it didn't matter at all.
Back in time, everyone knew everyone. Doors weren't fortresses. Gates weren't warnings. There weren't signs that scream, "no trespassing", no invisible walls that separate neighbors.
We had a favorite spot, privately owned, technically.
It was a cathedral of greenery. Coconut trees rose like sentinels around its edges, with shiny leaves that seemed to whisper secrets to the wind. Banana plants fanned out in lush, broad strokes of deep green.
The earth beneath our feet was soft and sandy, as though the ground itself had been laid just for us.
And oh, what we made out of it?
We gathered ourselves into playing siatong, sticks striking sticks, with each clank, and hums, echoing longer than it should.
We ran until our lungs burned, in dakup-dakop, feet drumming the dust, chase after breathless chase.
We folded into silence in tago-tago, holding our breath, to keep ourselves unseen.
We dug our heels deep for bagol-bagol, stubborn as stone, refusing to yield.
We splashed water into the earth and shrieking through with tubig-tubig, wild and laughing, determined not to be caught.
We knocked our playmates with luthang, armed with nothing but imagination and bamboo-twig guns.
We outwitted one another in jolen, marbles clicking like tiny bursts of thunder.
And that was only the beginning.
The games were endless, some remembered, others invented in the moment and gone by sunset.
The world felt wide. The days stretched long. We did not know boredom.
Because we were just simply, completely, recklessly, wonderfully alive.
I grew up in a time when the world felt thinner, when the line between what was real and what was whispered about in the dark could blur without warning. Folklore and superstition weren't just stories; they were the quiet laws that governed our lives.
These were not tales we questioned. They were truths, handed down like heirlooms. As children, we didn't ask for proof, we just believed.
Nighttime was when everything came alive.
Under the faint glow of a kerosene lamp, or the fragile, flickering light of a candle during sudden brownouts, we would gather close, shoulder to shoulder, breath held, eyes wide.
And the elders… they didn't tell stories the way books do.
They remembered them.
Their voices carried weight, as if each word had been lived, not imagined. They spoke of ghostly encounters, enchanted beings, and moments when the ordinary world slipped into something far stranger.
But what captivated me most were their stories of war, how they endured the terror and chaos of World War II. Hunger, fear, loss - these weren't distant ideas, but memories that still haunted them at that time.
We listened to everything.
Because in those nights, in that dim and trembling light, the world felt bigger, deeper… and just a little more mysterious than we could ever fully understand.
Basketball wasn't just my hobby, it was the rhythm of my childhood, the steady thump of a dream taking shape. It started with a scuffed little rubber ball when I was little.
Soon, I wasn't just another kid on the court. I was named ball captain of our mini-player team, chosen to lead in an inter-barangay tournament that felt, to us, like the biggest stage in the world.
Dust flew, shoes squeaked on the rough court, and every win pushed us closer to something unforgettable.
Then came the finals.
The air was thick with tension, the kind that makes your heartbeat louder than the crowd. The score was tight. Time was slipping.
In those last few seconds, the ball found its way to me. I remember the weight of it in my hands, the world narrowing to the rim, the silence just before the shot.
I jumped and released.
For a heartbeat, everything stood still.
Then - swish.
The crowd exploded. My teammates rushed to me, shouting, laughing, lifting me off the ground. In that moment, I felt invincible.
And yet, without warning, that chapter closed.
A few months later, we moved away and settled in another place - far from my comfort zone, far from the noise.
We moved to a quieter, hilly countryside. No more tournaments. No more final game. Just distance and silence.
But that last shot? That feeling?
It never really left.
I spent my childhood beneath the shadow of Martial Law, a time when silence and caution were not merely habits but unspoken rules. Then came the siren, that long wail tearing through the stillness of the night, announcing that curfew was about to begin.
It did not merely warn. It commanded. People hurried at its sound, footsteps quickening against the pavement.
The streets, we were told, would soon belong to uniformed men, soldiers who moved through the night with rifles.
As children, we could not fully comprehend the weight pressing down on those years. We were simply given rules: be home before nine, stay close to family, never wander.
Fear was never spoken aloud, never even named, yet it lived among us like a quiet, uninvited guest.
And yet, to the eyes of a child, the world refused to be entirely consumed by fear.
Dragonflies hovered like tiny jewels above the grass; grasshoppers leapt between bushes. We chased them, catching them with our bare hands, then letting them go.
Even before the siren pierced the night, we would sometimes gather beneath coconut trees, surrounded by bushes, playing games under the moon's silver glow.
Afterward, we leaned close together on a worn wooden bench, telling stories that felt, in that moment, like the most important ones ever spoken.
My childhood friends became my world, and their homes felt just as welcoming, as if I were part of their families.
Looking back now, I understand that our innocence was a kind of armor, fragile in nature, yet fiercely protective.
We did not seek grand adventures, because wonder has its own way of revealing itself in the ordinary: in the flight of a dragonfly, in the glow of the moon, in the warmth of a neighbor's open door.
We asked so little of the world, and somehow, the world gave us everything.
Every Christmas Eve, our home blazed to life with the Noche Buena celebration. It was not merely a meal; it was a sacred ritual, a vigil we kept together until the midnight hour finally arrived.
The dining table displayed my mother's finest creations, dishes she poured her heart and hands into, each one more mouthwatering than the last.
As a crowning touch, we awaited the arrival of puto and biko from my aunt, my father's sister, whose hands seemed blessed with a gift for traditional cooking.
Then, barely a week later, we did it all again.
Media Noche on New Year's Eve carried its own kind of magic. This time, the table was adorned with an array of high-value fruits, most of them round.
Oranges, grapes, apples, melons, and more. Their shapes were deliberate, their meaning ancient.
In Filipino tradition, round forms whispered of coins, of abundance, of a prosperous year waiting just beyond midnight's threshold.
And then the night would erupt.
As the final minutes of the year slipped away, the air itself seemed to shudder. The sharp crack of firecrackers echoed in every direction.
Pots and pans rang out in a metallic chorus. Then came the boom of our lantaka, our homemade bamboo cannon.
Children joined the chaos with toy trumpets pressed to their lips, shrieking and laughing into the smoke-filled night.
On the streets, tartanillas clattered past, horse-drawn carriages dragging rattling tin cans behind them like comets blazing through the spark-filled dark.
At the stroke of midnight, we leapt, all of us children, throwing ourselves into the air, convinced that each jump would make us grow a little taller in the coming year.
It was deafening. It was breathless. It was chaos wrapped in light and laughter.
But above all else, it was magic.
✦ to be continued in the next chapter ✦
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