Breaking Chains

Nineteen years ago, I knew a little lonely child.
She newly transferred to her house at the province.
She is a new student in a new school.
She is making new friends in the compound, all were her cousins.

She left her old house in the City. As well as some cherished childhood memories.
Her friends across the street. The neighbors whose voices and faces she came to know in her life of seven young years. The big grandparents house. Silong, siesta, sundo from school . . .
Her special tita who nurtured and cared for her when she was growing up.
Nobody knows that most of the time, she asks who is mother, and who is tita.
And on the day that she was to leave the City house, she cried hours and hours, huddled in her tita's tight embrace. She asked for tita to come with her, but tita said she has to stay at the City.

Silent tears flowed hours and hours, she lost track of time.

All these she left behind.
But the impact of sorrow was too much for a little girl.
That her heart just threatened to stop feeling at all.
That the ache is too sharp, too heavy.
So in the darkest, most secret of all secret places, in the old City house, she hid her heart.
She coiled it with thick chains of red and silver. Locked it with black candado.
Keeping the key deep within.
Never to unlock it again because of the mighty emotions she felt, frightening and painful and shattering.
That was her first experience of abandonment.

Crazy pain,
She never want to feel again. She. Promised. Herself.

Years passed.

She built her life. Triumphs. Failures. Lies. Betrayals. Forgiveness. Depression. Hope.
High school. College. Career. Work. Inspiration. Despair.
Now she's an adult.

She learned of more abandonment. She learned of more horrors than abandonment.
She learned of self-preservation. She learned of protective walls, of empathy and of pretending.
She learned of concealing pain. Of vulnerability. Of tears in waking up. Of tears for others.
Of tears for herself. Of tears on sleepless nights.
She learned of tightly shutting her eyes to hold back tears.
Of running to the comfort room to cry it all at once and emerge from the cubicle with strategy to let not one soul know about her hurt.

Then she learned of people who will try to dig in. Who will try to make her trust them.
Who will make her believe that affection and care can heal that badly burned empty place where heart once was.
What follows: bliss, happiness, adoration, intimacy.
Then of course: betrayal, lies, reworking, blaming, endless negotiations.
More and more abandonment. Feeling like the helpless foolish little girl again and again and again.
More and more isolation. More and more the empty space where heart once was is becoming bigger, hollower, darker, emptier, scarier, full of failed dreams, bitterness.
But the other part is -- a part of herself nurtured by faith, renewal, innocence and hope, something close to soul -- says:
1. Cutting slack of the strictness
2. More and more strength.
3. More and more attuned to herself.
More and more she realizes that to arrest the dark growth of the place where the heart once was, she has to put the heart back in it.
And now she is preparing to mount that journey.

*

During roughest bump in life, a little voice in her dreams reminded her (much like the voice of the little girl she knew 19 years ago) -- you promised.

What promise? Not to hurt again?
Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing that she knows now is that (a) these hurts propel her forward: making her realize the immediacy of decision based on fewer mistakes and self-preservation. (b)These pains are part of learning process. (c)That these cruel bitterness is what makes the good times count. And the darkness is just an invitation to reveal the light of the star stuff that the bodies are made of.

Back to the present, facing that old rusty promise; saying hello to an old friend.
Now she's an adult made stronger by tears, breakdowns, fears and doubts -- she wants to make a new promise. Immersed in the reality of life, she asks herself if it is the right time to break that old promise.

Maybe one day, she will break the chain. Baby steps. One gentle step after the other.
And she is out on a journey to find a worthy reason to free her heart again.