Now Showing: No Red Curtains. No Audience. No Cheers. No Applause.

    Just for you to know, I am Edgil.

    No more sad scenarios in this story but there are these moments that was really a heartbreaking screenplay. No red curtains. No audience. No cheers. No applause. Just an unhappy thoughts and a silence reader while traveling back 14 years ago.

    It was a dark dead evening of my first four years of breathing, while the clocks were about to strike at our end. We’re hiding behind the seven-foot wild grass. Hearing my mother’s heavy breathing, heavy as Thor has lifted, we couldn’t find a haven. I couldn’t find the hope. My mother, my brother and I were afraid to a man that I called - father. He’s holding a gun, and a knife, any moment the clock will strike at our end. Shouts. Weeps. That’s all in my head. I couldn’t forget that moment because every time I’m having nightmares that is what I dreamed about. No sad scenarios but a horrific one.

   Just for you to know, we survived. My father forgives, my mother did also. We tried to build a new castle, repaint our smiles, took another photo, hang it on the wall, then recall everything. Me and my Kuya Bitoy, learned how to smile sincere, innocent, and sweet… Again. From then on, since that night ends, I was never been afraid of darkness, I learned how to love playing with my worst playmate ever – my shadow; that stays with me in the light but leaves me in the dark.

   As a toddler, my heart is larger than my brain. I forgive fast. I forget fast. But not to my precious days. In this part no more sad scenarios but happy moments. No tears. No broken hearts. Just joy. Playing under the sun or even under the rain. Reminiscing those days when I couldn’t define rainbow’s colors but its beauty. No clothes. No shirt. No shorts. No shame. Looking back 16 years ago, every time it rains, I wish it just stayed. Every three in the afternoon and the rain won’t let sun to shine, I’m waiting for some of my childhood friends to knock on our door’s house, wet and happy to inform me that there is a street named Blk. 62, where the ditches are clogged by plastics, diapers, wood stick, dead rats, and more plastics so that as a result the water is cumulating in the pathway, filling the streets that give us an instant one-foot street pool. Who cares? We don’t have to sing “rain, rain go away, come again another day because little Edgil wants to play.” Instead, we sing, “Rain, rain, don’t go away, the stronger you are, the deeper street pool we’ll have.”

    In Bicol, we also climbed trees, swam at the river, played at the rice field, and do “Paragos” a play that every child in province played, they took a coconut branch, bring it at the top of the hill and ride it going down, we also got chased ourselves by the dogs, stargazed at the roof, experimented the “Bazooka”, used slingshot as a hunting paraphernalia, and do more stupid things that I clearly remember but it’s too abundant to mention.

    It is so nice to be back, to laugh at nonsense things, to cry over a simple thing, to do things without regrets, and to play all day. No worries. No sadness.

    While traveling in the past, I suddenly remember those days that I stole money from my Papa’s wallet. A hundred pesos thrice a week, yes, I know I’m so bad. But I stop doing it when my father notices that I took again his money, this time it’s not a hundred pesos but twenty pesos. “Sisay ang nagkuko didi sa pitaka ko?” He angrily asked using our mother-tongue Bicolano saying, who took his money. He received no answer. My heart starts to pound as he picked his belt, I start to sweat, my hands were cold and I thought that I was choked by my tongue because I know for sure, any moment the belt will strike at me. I couldn’t say “ouch”, I just accept every beat leaving me red marks that soon will turn into indigo but still I didn’t inset any hard feelings for my dad, I admit that it is my fault, maybe we need marks that will remind us of something. Looking back on that day, I just smiled and refreshed every piece of detail in my mind. And as I go farther way back 2006 all of my present-day body was filled with grieve and regrets saying I should’ve played more and explore more as a kid. I should’ve taken more slides at the McDonald’s children playground rounded slides but I didn’t because I’m afraid of thinking that I might get stuck inside of it. I should’ve traveled more grabbing the opportunity when a seven-year-old before is free on riding the bus. I should’ve played more and spent my whole time being tired and happy person. I should’ve tasted the things I wanted to taste when people around me are willing to give everything that I want because of my cuteness. I should’ve been a kid when I was a kid. An eight-year-old kid is too young to be burdened. I shouldn’t been thinking that I have to grow fast. But I did. I didn’t take the chance when I have it. I can’t go back, no one can. No one.

   Just for you to know, I’ve played “Patintero”, Hide and seek, “Sabadan ning laboy” or mud war, “Taya-tayaan”, “Habol-habulan”, “Luto-lutuan”, “Titser-titseran”, “Bahay-bahayan”, or any Pinoy games that has “an” as a suffix, I guessed I played it all. As we grow, any one of us will realize that there’s no perfection in this life but full of regrets and disappointments. But if we only embrace and accept all of our imperfection and mistakes, there’s no room for regrets neither disappointments if we only knew how to have contended and happy like a kid we will be completed. Do not ever lose your inner child that also quoted in the Maupassant’s The Little Prince.

    Everyone has their own happy ending if it is still not a happy screenplay ending then it is not yet the end. No red curtains. No audience. No cheers. No applause. Just an amateur writer and a silence reader that will travel back to learn and live life to the fullest.