ePiToMe oF a mAn's DaRknEsS

"There are 6 billion people in this world - some are running scared, some are coming home, some tell lies to make it through the day, some are evil men struggling with good, some are good struggling with evil."

Family had always been the strongest foundation to a man's life. It is where he begins; it is where he draws back.

As the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia states, a family is the basic social group united through bonds of kinship or marriage, present in all societies. Ideally, the family provides its members with protection, companionship, security, and socialization. The structure of the family and the needs that the family fulfils vary from society to society. The nuclear family—two adults and their children—is the main unit in some societies.

It may be funny to some people, but having a dad who would shout at you every 4:00AM of your weekday just to go to school, shout at you to get up using words of extreme descriptive and emotional sensation that you don’t need to hear just to tell he’s mad, and physically hurt you just to have you eat your breakfast without even having the slightest feeling of holding back, is not really an anecdote to those who are suffering or had suffered the extreme showcase of father-son love. It was like cancer – an agonizing experience that will slowly and painfully devour you.

The traumatizing experience that I had with my dad started in a very early stage until it slowly consumed the rest of my humane perception of him.

Let me put it in four stages:

“BENIGN MUTATION OF 1996"

In my family with 5 siblings, I can be considered as the blacksheep among the rest. I wouldn’t always go with him anywhere he goes.

The year was 1993. It was one of the most amazing years that I can remember with him, aside from the darkest decades that I endured, being my father. He was cool. A law enforcer for a dad was a child’s, during my time, dream dad. He would always bring me to school wearing his overly cool police uniform and would, again fetch me after his work. It was great calling him my father.

But not all stories go too well. It was not a fairy tale. Years went on and here I saw that my father was suffering from "Benign Mutation."
It was the year 1996 when everything changed. Setting aside the complex strata of Philippine political destabilization and politically incurred rallies, my dad underwent a sudden phenomenal and abrupt change.

He turned into a monster.

He started to act weird towards us, towards me. He was hostile, unreceptive, harsh, and tough. He treated us with utmost distaste. He started shouting at us for no valid reason at all. Whip us with his belt for petty mischief.

Would your father whip you for playing with the fixtures on the clothesline? Well, my father did.

It was sad to say that from that point on, I started to feel something was different. Things would never be the same - that I will have this kind of person in front of me for a decade of sadness and hate.


to be continued...