I Step Outside to Scream Back
Cauayan City, Isabela, Philippines
2025, Senior, Creative Writing
When I was a child, I used to lie beneath trees because I thought they’d never leave me. The grass was cool. The branches were safe. The world felt still, as if it could hold me forever. I believed trees were constants—homes, fathers, breath. I thought they’d always be there. But then they vanished. No sound. No reason. Just absence. The places I once ran to when the world was too loud became stumps, then nothing. I kept going back, thinking if I waited long enough, they’d return. They didn’t.
My father once told me that trees are the lungs of the Earth. He said it gently, like it was sacred. I didn’t know he was teaching me how to grieve. I didn’t realize he was preparing me to one day sit beside him as his lungs surrendered. Preparing me to watch him try to breathe in a world that had forgotten how. I didn’t understand how permanent loss could feel. Now, every breath feels artificial. My chest moves, but nothing inside believes it matters. My body pretending to be alive still means something.
The heat presses down on me. Guilt wrapped in sunlight. It clings to my skin and crawls into my lungs. Each breath is smoke I can’t exhale. Not the fleeting kind, but the kind that stays long after the fire dies. Decay hangs in the air. Trash spreads everywhere. Plastic bags cling to the last surviving branches. Gutters overflow with wrappers, broken toys, pieces of a past no one cleaned up. No one even looks anymore. There are bins, occasionally, but they’re always empty. Or ignored. It feels like the whole world gave up at once, and no one noticed.
I used to love spiderwebs. They seemed fragile, but even storms couldn’t destroy them. That gave me hope. I thought we could be like that. Breakable, but enduring. But now, there are no webs. No spiders. Just empty corners and dust. Maybe they gave up, too.
And the sea. I remember the first time I saw it after dynamite fishing. It didn’t move. It looked resigned. Fish floated belly-up, eyes open, not in fear, but in confusion. As if they couldn’t understand what they did to deserve it. Neither could I. People blamed poverty. But when did poverty become an excuse to destroy the last living things we had? When did desperation evolve into destruction?
Then the typhoons came. Always. Pain with a timetable. When Ulysses hit, I saw my neighbour’s house fold in on itself. I stood still as the wind stripped everything away. No one cried. No one screamed. They just watched. Too tired to mourn. That silence hurt the most. They called it resilience. I didn’t. It didn’t feel like strength. It felt like surrender. We weren’t surviving. We were adapting to collapse.
The worst part? This is normal now. Dead trees don’t shock anyone. Flooded streets are just routine. People say “It’s hotter this year”, and keep walking. I think the world already ended, and we’re living in its remains. Pretending nothing changed. Pretending silence isn’t screaming.
As for me, I’m tired. Not the kind of sleep fixes. I feel erased. The parts of me that used to feel bright are flickering out. Some nights, I wonder if this is the chapter where I fake everything. Fake hope. Fake strength. Fake a future I don’t believe in. People say the world is breaking. I think we are, too. And no one seems to care.
Still, I admire the Philippine Eagle. Not just for its beauty. For its silence. It doesn’t beg. It just watches. From heights I’ll never reach, from branches that barely exist. It waits, patient and fading, a ghost above the wreckage. Fewer than 400 remain.
Four hundred feathers are clinging to the sky, while we scroll past as if it means nothing. What happens when the sky forgets how to carry wings?
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll live to see the last one fall. If someone will posts it online with a caption: “The final eagle, 2029.” Will anyone feel anything? Or will we keep hiding behind playlists and coffee and hollow laughter? Grief is easy to ignore when it isn’t yours. But what if it is? What if we’re not just watching extinction, but becoming it?
I talk to the eagle in my head. A kid praying to something that can’t answer. I whisper, “Hold on. I’m still here. I’m trying.” But what does trying mean anymore? Picking up three pieces of trash while rivers drown in waste? Memorizing medicinal plants like Lagundi in case hospitals vanish? Crying alone because the sky is empty and the air burns and I can’t breathe without shame? Is that trying? Is it enough?
No one teaches you how to bury a tree. No one tells a child how to mourn a forest. We inherit silence. We’re told to move on. Let go. Grow up. But I won’t. I remember the wind when it smelled of rain. I remember the sea before it went still. I won’t forget. This isn’t nostalgia. This isn’t longing. This is fury. This is the scream I was never taught to make.
My connection to nature is not soft. It’s made of grief. Rage. Responsibility.
Nature raised me. Fed me. Held me when nothing else did. Now it’s bleeding. I won’t look away. I don’t care if I’m young. I don’t care if I’m small. I don’t care if I’m one voice among billions who refuse to see. The Earth doesn’t ask for permission. It only asks one thing.
Did you fight for me before it was too late?
I don’t feel at peace outside. I feel haunted. I feel hunted. I feel like the last witness to a slow-motion apocalypse. And I’m done being quiet.
If you love something, you don’t admire it from a distance. You fight. You bleed. You set yourself on fire if it means lighting the way forward. I’ve outlived the trees of my childhood. I may outlive the eagle.
But I will not let the silence outlive me.
Reflection
Reflection
I wrote “I Step Outside to Scream Back” because I needed to let everything out. This piece came from pain I’ve been carrying for a long time. It’s about the trees I grew up with, the sea I used to love, and my father who passed away during the pandemic. It’s about losing the things that made me feel safe, and realizing they might never come back. When I was younger, nature felt like home. I used to lie under trees and feel like the world would always stay the same. But now, everything’s changing. The heat is worse. The air feels heavy. There’s trash everywhere. People don’t seem to care anymore, and that’s what hurts the most. Losing my father made me understand how much breathing matters. He once told me trees are the lungs of the Earth, and now that he’s gone, I see that everything is connected. When we hurt nature, we hurt ourselves too. This piece is my way of showing that. It’s not just about the environment. It’s about grief, about growing up, and about feeling helpless but still trying. I didn’t write this to sound smart or impressive. I wrote it because I’m angry and tired and scared. I still care, even when it feels like no one else does. And even if I’m just one person, I want to speak up. I want to fight for the things I love like the Philippine Eagle, the trees of my childhood, and the sea that once gave me peace. This essay is my voice. My way of saying, “I see what’s happening, and I won’t look away.” I may be young, but I feel everything deeply. And I don’t want to stay quiet anymore.