HAVING BEEN a child wonderstruck with the worlds in fiction novels, I grew up loving the power and potential of storytelling.
One of the first short stories I ever wrote featured a man who was born on the stairs, lived on the stairs, and died on the stairs. It was bizarre, weird, and admittedly a bit brutal, but who could blame a naive kindergarten student who was writing away in a notebook with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on the colorful cover? The narrative was barely three paragraphs—the standard length of the “short stories” I had written at the time.
I had never paid much thought to this particular story, as I brushed it off as some whimsical fabrication from the peculiar and imaginative mind of a child. Upon looking back at it, however, the story started to resonate with me, as I became more aware of how a lot of us are enclosed in seemingly inescapable spaces.
I spent most of my teenage years in a public science high school, where I became friends with extremely talented people who not only had the purest hearts but also the most brilliant minds. We shared quite similar struggles in dividing the 24 hours that we had—school, homework, household chores, practices for class competitions, and more. Days bleeding into nights were spent physically working together for projects and papers, since not all of us had the technological capacities at home to do our parts on our own.
Growing up, I realized that we had to work twice as hard as our more financially privileged peers to secure a bright future. Knowing all of this created an unhealthy sense of perfectionism and overachievement: Grades became more than just numbers on a page but powerful figures that could make or break success. Thinking that I always needed to do more, I started overworking myself beyond fatigue—a mindset that I am still in the process of unlearning.
Sometimes, though, the effort we exert is still not enough. The innumerable sleepless nights and cumbersome days did not necessarily transport us to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Transitioning into senior high and college, many of my friends were forced to let go of their place in renowned universities because of the heavy financial demands that, for instance, an Ateneo education entails.
Chasing dreams, as we harshly realized, is a privilege in itself too; some of us have chosen to forgo our passions for a more practical career path that hopefully leads to promising financial opportunities. Although establishing security and pursuing passions are not necessarily polar opposites, we first had to feel confident that we will have food on the table ten or twenty years from now.
Like the fictional man that spent his whole life on a staircase, we seemingly had limited options. We were wriggling in tight spaces, making the most out of the restricted floor-to-ceiling considerations we were born into. Despite how different and layered the experiences of me and my friends were, there remained a similar thread that weaved our complex realities together: Money consistently limited and dictated our agency.
Of course, these stories do not end with the likes of us. There are more unjust realities that we do not fully know of, and people who strive harder than us but never receive half the comfort we experience nor the opportunities we encounter. To be aware of this fact should never usher solace or contentment: Frankly, it is a disturbing, ugly truth that continues to restrict human potential—which everyone should have the right to develop.
Choosing to tell such stories and giving a platform to stifled voices may be the first step to breaking the silence and bringing sidelined narratives of experienced inequalities to the surface.
To reclaim one of my first “short stories,” I am always emboldened by the hope that a day will come when no more individuals perish on the “stairs” that characterize their lack of freedom and agency. A day will come when the stories we have to tell are no longer those of structural grief and unwarranted tragedy, but of celebrated victory and served justice.
