Dark room

This Week’s Winner

Katherine M. Evangelista, 23, is a literature graduate of De La Salle University-Manila. She taught high school English and literature at St. Scholastica’s College-Westgrove for a year and a half, and is now taking her master’s degree in creative writing at DLSU. Katherine says she always wanted to be a writer: "I believe that to be able to achieve this goal one must read like one’s life depended on it. So books have become a basic part of my diet. I call them my mental and spiritual nourishment.



Memories — I never really understood this concept. People say that we have memories because they are the reminders of things that happened, the hint which allows us to say we exist in the world. Like everyone, I have my own set of existence reminders. They are all like little neon-colored Post-Its in my brain: lime green for good memories, hot pink for romantic memories, citrus orange for sad memories, and, oddly enough, pure white for the particularly bad memories. But amid this multicolored arrangement lies a particular memory covered in black. This one is not a Post-It. This is the memory that I live with every day of my life.

There are good days when I do not even think about it, and then there are very good days when it does not even bother me at all, but there are also the bad days when I cannot seem to get it out of my head, and the really bad days when I cannot even bring myself to get out of bed. It is during these days when I think of people with amnesia. I feel that they are lucky because something happened to take away all of those Post-Its. Many would disagree with me on this but, for those who have particularly dark memories, amnesia seems like a good option.

I was born in a small hospital in Angeles City, the city of angels, loosely translated, and not really used by the locals — it just seems like such a good name for a city. For sure I was the only white bundle in a sea of mocha. My family was not all that surprised since we have American blood. I’m actually of Irish/Spanish/American/Filipino descent. I sometimes refer to myself as a Starbucks coffee blend. But that was not the surprise since my mother has an alabaster complexion. The kicker was when I opened my eyes; nobody expected blue to be staring back at them. I was an instant hit, or so my father tells me. Everyone wanted a piece of the baby girl with white skin, no hair, and blue eyes. "Adorable!" they would say, "The perfect doll." Although I do not remember any of this, from the stories, it would probably be the most innocent time of my life. If there was a time I always wanted to go back to, it would be around then.

When I was about three, my parents and I moved to Manila. Everyone seemed like they needed to get away. I did not mind much, little as I was at the time. We lived with family friends in a small apartment below their house. It was actually more like a basement, but thanks to my mother, it became livable just until our own house, which was being constructed in the very young Ayala Alabang, would be completed.

This was the time everything changed for me. This was where my darkest of memories come from. I just turned four when my parents decided to leave on a tour for Europe with the family friends we lived with. They decided that I was too young to lug around Europe, so they left me behind with a maid, someone I do not even remember; but the events that occurred during the absence of my parents took me two decades to forgive. I did not even understand what was happening to me. This is also probably why I detest maids. The trauma of that month without my parents has been forever burned behind my eyelids.

At first, the maid was good. She would let me play at all hours. She would even let me wander the small village where the house we were staying in was located. I would go from house to house, a four-year-old little girl ringing doorbells and entering the homes of strangers. Mostly it would be other maids who would let me in, not really caring. One day, the maid that was taking care for me decided I was being a burden to her since the maids of the other houses began complaining about my intrusions into the homes of their masters. That was the end of my freedom.

At the age of four, I learned what it was to be a prisoner in my own home. The maid decided that it would be best to lock me inside the very small bathroom we had in our apartment. I would be in there until she remembered to let me out, and that was usually very late at night already. I remember not being afraid of what was happening to me. I did not even cry during my time of confinement. It was very odd. She would shove me inside the bathroom and lock it from the outside. I would then proceed to knock on the door and ask what she was doing, but, of course, there was no answer. After about five minutes of that, I would go to my perch on top of the toilet bowl. I would sit there for hours on end, listening to the water dripping into the bath bucket kept in the shower. I would hug my knees up to my chest and rest a cheek on them looking at the closed door.

There would be days when the maid would even forget to feed me. Locking me inside the bathroom was far more convenient for her. Minutes would turn into hours and, in the end, night would fall. I was too small to reach the light switch when dark fell. My only source of light was the orange perimeter fence light coming through the bathroom’s only window. Not once did I cry during this time. I do not even remember what I was thinking of during my confinement. All I knew was I was alone and I did not understand why I was there. It did not even occur to me that I was being abused. Only when I reached high school did I finally understand the gravity of what had happened to me.

The day my parents returned I was told that I looked malnourished and emaciated, the shadow of the healthy, happy little girl they had left behind. That was also the last time I was ever left behind with a maid when they traveled. I do not know what happened to the woman I was left with. All my parents told me was that she was fired. At first, I did not care since my parents were back. It would only be years later when the nightmares would begin. All the feelings I did not feel during my time of confinement finally rose to the surface.

There were nights when I could not sleep with the light off because the darkness always reminded me of the very small bathroom and the hunger I endured. I would have dreams of being shoved inside the small bathroom and locked there, not as a little girl anymore but as someone grown up, someone who understood what it meant to be abused and what it felt like to be locked inside a little box till darkness came to take away all the light. I would wake up sweating, not screaming, just out of breath and afraid.

These memories followed me from my life as a teased grade school girl and as an emotionally abused high school student. Everything that happened to me during the years of my youth stemmed from my days of confinement. I would always see myself inside that bathroom alone. Hence, I became someone starved for comfort, and it led me to do things that I do not even want to recall today. I just brush those days off as character builders — the adult version of denying trauma suffered during childhood.

The experience inside the small bathroom permanently scarred my relationships with people. I became untrusting of anyone I met. At first, I would feel happy with new friends, but when my dark memory would bother me, I would begin to take it out on them. I would test people and see how long they would stay until eventually I would push them away and I would find myself back inside that dark bathroom all alone. Those were crazy days. Sometimes, the insanity of it all would just overwhelm me to the point of contemplating suicide. Life did not really matter to me during those days since I always felt alone.

Somehow college helped alleviate the pain I felt inside. I gradually began to find myself and places where I belonged. It actually helped that I lived alone for most of those years. I started to come to grips with myself and the experience that haunted even my waking hours. But do not be fooled; I was still not "okay." There would be bouts of depression and weekly visits to the college psychologist to get myself in order. I always thought that as long as I was not taking medication I was doing fine. But my feelings of being trapped inside the bathroom persisted, the loneliness lingering within my heart and mind.

The psychologist, who has become a dear friend of mine, told me that the reason why my dreams persist and the feeling of being trapped continues is because I was waiting for someone to open the door and let the light in. This statement clicked in my head. She was right. My constant search for comfort, my fear of being left behind, and pushing people away all stemmed from the feelings I did not feel when I was locked inside the bathroom as a little girl.

It has been two years since I graduated college. So much has changed in my life. I have grown a little wiser and much stronger. My friend the psychologist would check on me from time to time, and she says I am doing well. I know that I am doing well since I can live my life without the fear of being left alone anymore. I have come to terms with what happened. I even confronted my mother about being left behind, and our relationship is better now because of it. What happened to me does not come to mind as much anymore, but it is still there. I just learned how to handle it better. The only thing that has not changed is that, in some ways, I am still that little girl locked inside the dark bathroom staring at the door and waiting for it to be opened. I can only hope that one day someone will come, open that door for me, let the light in, take my hand and pull me out. When that happens I will never look back.