Elisco Road

One afternoon, I was riding a bike along Elisco Road when I heard someone shouting. As I neared a bend, I saw a couple struggling. A man was tying the hands of a woman with a belt while a boy was watching beside them. The woman kept shouting, “I am not leaving here! I am not leaving here!”

The woman wore dirty and greasy clothes. She seemed mentally ill.

I've never been the nosy type. So I just passed by and thought no more of it.

But a day later, I was passing by the same road and I saw the woman was still there. She was sitting quietly by the side of the road beside the tall concrete electric post. It seems that her husband was not able to bring her home.

I remember when I was still active in a church community, we visited a mental hospital in Mandaluyong. It was part of an outreach program. My group was assigned the tasks to clean the quarters of mentally ill patients. But I thought we were probably also sent there - to observe their conditions.

The patients in the mental hospital ranged in different stages of mental progress. There are some whom you could talk to like normal people. There are some who are lost in their own world. All they do is run around in the room for no reason. Some just stare at you blankly.

But what clearly struck me with the experience was one patient who was constantly singing. The melody was her own invention and the lyrics were here own. If you listen carefully, you will know her the story, why she was admitted in the mental hospital.

She was singing about a wife and an unfaithful husband.

Really. There are only two things that drive people to lose their mind. One is drug overdose, the other is a traumatic experience that a person was not able to handle.

Oh People. The things we do to each other.

I wonder what's the story of the woman in Elisco Road?  Why does she not want to go back to her family?

Last night it rained.  I wondered about the ill woman in Elisco Road. How did she manage? I wondered how it felt like sitting there, all alone in the dark? The mosquitoes probably bit really hard. But she wouldn't notice because her mind were somewhere else.

I wondered how does she eat and drink each day.

This morning I happened to pass by the road again. It was part of my usual workout loop.  I saw that the woman was still sleeping. Then I noticed that someone left some bread beside her.

She may have gone crazy. She may not want to go home. But her family did not stop looking after her.

It was a good enough thought for me since I think there wasn't much I could do to help anyway.