False awakening and lucid dreaming: The terror and the fun

A plain grey door is facing you. You turn the knob and encounter a gruel-looking monster whose features are similar to Marvel's Groot, only he is less adorable. Of course you become frightened... but then you realize, "Where am I and why would such a creature exist in the real world? A-ha! I'm dreaming! I am now lucid, I can make it better!" And make it better, you did. The walls become clearer, the monster become kinder. Everything is light now. Just as you wanted.

For a few moments you are actually having fun and feeling triumphant since you've been wishing to have another lucid dream for a long time. What makes it better than just being aware is that you were also controlling it. Still joyous, you look to your right when all of a sudden, you find that something dark is eating up the wall. You become afraid and lose control: the whole place becomes even bleaker and worse than before. What should you do? You bite your fingers and you feel the pain but you are still there. Your brain is making a fool out of you by stimulating the sense of pain. How do you wake up? Com'on body, wake up!

The thought of not being able to escape the nightmare that you have created is eating up your insides and making your heart beat fast. How do you wake up? How do you wake up? You struggle for what seemed like five minutes looking for a way out until everything turns black. Your eyelids open and you find yourself lying on the floor, the thought of escaping the previous nightmare making you happy. You look around and you thought to yourself, "Where the hell am I? What the hell are they?" They look a lot like horses but if they were horses, shouldn't they be standing on four feet? You are still dreaming. You have not awoken. You have been fooled again by your own subconscious.

This makes you panic even more: what the actual fudge? This is similar to what happens to movies--Inception much? Wake up! Wake up! How do you wake up? Contrary to popular belief, biting and the sense of pain won't do it. The world collapses around you, the familiar blackness engulfed your sight, and all of a sudden you find yourself lying on a hard floor. This might be it. You don't know how, but maybe you have woken up for real. You open your eyes, and lo and behold... another fantasy world with queer surroundings and surreal creatures. Seriously? You know you are dreaming but you have no idea how to wake up, so you list all the inconsistencies you experience in your head. In the real world, no such colorful tree with candies as fruits exist. In the real world, people look human, not like hairy animals wearing suits and carrying suitcases. Damn it, why aren't you still waking?

You are trapped. You jump in your dream and you walk but your body seems to be still: you must have woken up if your body was acting out together with your mind. And then that does it--it makes you remember that 9gag post you read about sleep paralysis. You might not be able to wake up at all unless somebody wakes you hard. What if you end up trapped here until you die?

Another blackout. Your head feels light and you wake up to the familiar light-blue misplaced tiles in your house. You are home. You brush your teeth and you talk with your brother. It's dinner time and you were watching a movie. Wait, what? Why is everything happening like you were still in a dream, in such a way that successions were really fast? This isn't the way in the real life. Time. Where's the time your spent idle? You are still dreaming! Your heart beats faster than ever. How long will you be trapped in your dream world? How much sense of fear of being trapped, being lucid, and being helpless all at the same time should you suffer before it all ends?

Something shakes you and you wake up to a mere blackness. You feel the familiar pillow you used and the mini comforter you spread out on the sofa. You are awake now... aren't you?

The story of our family's little brave-heart

A mother whose depression and anxiety was manifested through her screeching wails that can be heard through the thin walls separating our houses, a father whose gambling addiction was taking a toll on his family's poverty, and a sister who grew up to endless screams and ended up mentally retarded--this is the kind of family Harry was born into. To make things worse for him, Harry can be considered an 'accident.'

It was around 2 am on the sixth of November (if I remember it correctly) when we heard Nanay shouting her lungs out in front of our door, "Myrna, manganganak na si Cecil!" My mother, who is a midwife, got up right away, took some utensils from Tita Cecil (who was a government nurse), and helped her younger sister deliver birth. For nine months, Tita thought she was nurturing a single child inside her womb. My mother also believed her ordeal was over after successfully taking out a bloody baby boy (later named Harold) and handing him over to Nanay. She was puzzled when she noticed another human being encapsulated in the womb: after a few minutes of tugging and carefully holding the infant's head--there he was, the unexpected twin baby brother: Harry.

The twins were extremely good-looking but badly taken care of. I would hear Tita Cecil crying and wailing against the two babies' cries of hunger, "Bakit ba kasi ganito ang buhay ko? Hirap na hirap na 'ko!" She would yell to her heart's content until everybody in our cramped neighborhood was awake and Nanay would have to comfort her and the three kids. Hilary, the oldest of them who was three years old, not understanding any better, would sometimes chime in. When there's calm, I would visit the babies, play with them, and put them to sleep. Sometimes, the calm was because the babies were left to their own cribs and Tita has gone off somewhere. 

When times got so hard, Tita Cecil would try to commit suicide by blocking the jeepneys going through our street. She also attempted to jump off the Tullahan bridge. You'd think she was bluffing until the day after her daughter's fourth birthday, when she hanged herself to death on their upper floor. I can vividly recall that moment when Nanay, looking a lot weary and older, told me to come over and look at Tita's lifeless body on the floor. Nanay said her body was still warm when she saw her and she shouted as loud as she could to notify everyone. It was too late.

Their house was later evacuated: Tito Allan, the father of the three and widower of my departed Tita, Harold, and Hilary would live in Caloocan leaving Harry to my grandparents. In turn, the house's leasing charges would be given to Tito Allan. Harry grew up with us in the tiny compound, nourished by Nanay and Tatay, but his siblings were less lucky. Hilary and Harold lived in a tiny cardboard shelter which roof would fly along with the wind during a storm. Harold was way darker than Harry, his teeth untended, and he would speak colloquial and swear words. Harold, being calmer and kinder, was my favorite of the twin when they were babies. Due to their living conditions, as kids Harry became more well-mannered.

Harold would sustain his and his sister's food by scrapping, as noticeable by his distress when we would throw away plastic, "Akin nal lang. a! Pwedeng pang-kalakal 'to!" Tito Allan was a failure of a father who would spend his nights gambling. Some days, he would come to the compound and would take Harry with him and leave Harold with Nanay. One such unfortunate day was when Harold took Harry's yellow bike and drove off to the street, only to meet a fatal accident with a jeepney at the corner of the road. Harry lost his twin brother to excessive blood loss due to his lung's injury. However, the one to take the hardest blow was his eldest sister. During his funeral, Hilary would mutter, "Wala na. Wala na si Harold, wala na akong kasama. Ikaw na lang Mama ko, Tita, Wala na 'kong mama e." It was heartbreaking.

Almost a year later, Harry would lose his second father figure as well. Our dearest Tatay passed away last August to a heart attack.

I don't know how much an eight-year-old boy could endure. Similar to his sister, Harry is suffering from a mental illness perhaps brought up by Tita Cecil's upbringing with endless screams and forced alcohol consumption (both by Tita and Nanay) when he was an infant. It's hard for him to focus at school and learning to read is quite catastrophic. He has such an unfortunate family background (although I have dysfunctional relatives as a whole) and he has experienced so much loss in the few years of his life. I cannot speak for his pain nor can I gauge how far he understood. All I know is that the kid definitely needs some loving. Right now, he walks from school back home alone and would help Nanay in selling ice candy and gelatin on the street afterwards. What a little brave-heart.

Our little William Wallace