How Lito started over in life after the flood took everything

For twenty years, Lito's mornings started the same way. Up at four, a cup of barako, then out to the fishpond in Malolos that he built with his father. Bangus, mostly. Enough to send two kids to school and fix the roof when it leaked.

Then the typhoon came in August. The river rose overnight and kept rising. By morning the dikes of his fishpond were under water and the fish were gone, washed out into the bay with everything else. He stood at the edge in his tsinelas, looking at brown water where his work used to be.

He stood at the edge in his tsinelas, looking at brown water where his work used to be.

"Babangon tayo," he told his wife, Weng. He meant it. He borrowed money to repair the dikes and restock. Two months later he started coughing and couldn't stop. The doctor at the provincial hospital said pneumonia, then said rest. Six weeks of rest, for a man who had never taken six days off.

By December the borrowed money was gone, the pond was half repaired, and Lito spent his afternoons on a plastic chair by the door, watching his neighbors go out on their boats.

Losing the pond was hard. What came after was harder. Lito had always known who he was: the one who worked, the one who provided, the one people called when their own dikes needed fixing. Sitting by the door, he didn't know who that was anymore.

He stopped answering texts from his barkada. He snapped at his son over a broken plate. At night he lay awake doing the math again: the debt, the school fees, the cost of fingerlings, the months until a harvest. Every way he added it, the numbers said he had lost twenty years in one night.

Weng saw it. "Kumain ka naman," she would say, sliding a plate toward him. He would eat a little and go back to the chair. When she asked what he was thinking, he said, "Wala." The truth was that he felt like a failure, and he didn't know how to say that out loud.

To Lito, starting over meant getting everything back at once: the pond, the money, his strength, his place. Since he couldn't do all of that, he did none of it.

Since he couldn't do all of that, he did none of it.

The turn came from his old friend Mang Celso, who stopped by one morning with pandesal and sat on the next chair without asking. They talked about the weather and the price of gas. Then Celso said, "Ikaw ba, kumusta ka talaga?" and waited.

Lito surprised himself. He told him about the math at night, the shame, the feeling that he had let his family down. Celso nodded. "Ganyan din ako noong nasunog yung bangka ko. Isang taon bago ako nakabalik." It was the first time Lito felt that what he was going through had a shape, and an end.

Celso asked him to help on his boat a few mornings a week, mending nets and steering. It didn't pay much. It got Lito out of the chair at four in the morning and out on the water at sunrise. For the first time in months, he came home with the good kind of tired.

His mother used to say Lamentations 3:22-23 over breakfast when he was a boy. Out on the water at dawn, he finally understood why she liked it so much.

One Sunday night, he and Weng wrote everything on one sheet of paper: what they owed, what came in, what could wait. Written down, it was smaller than the version in his head. They went to the cooperative together, asked for more time on the loan and got it.

Lito didn't make a big plan. He made a small list, the kind a man who works with his hands understands. Fix ten meters of dike this week. Go out with Celso three mornings. Eat breakfast with the kids. Pray before sleeping, even if it's one sentence.

Some weeks he did all of it. Some weeks he did one thing. Weng taught him to count the one thing as a win.

Weng taught him to count the one thing as a win.

He went back to church, too. The pastor put a hand on Lito's shoulder after the service and said, "Ipagdadasal ka namin." The next Saturday, a few men from the church came to help rebuild part of the dike.

When the sleepless nights didn't let up, Weng pushed him to go back to the health center, this time about the worry and the low mood. The doctor listened, asked about his sleep and his drinking, and referred him to a counselor who came to town twice a month. Lito went to keep Weng happy. He kept going because it helped.

By the next dry season, part of the pond was stocked again. It was smaller than before. Lito says it's the best thing he ever built, because he built it twice.

Maybe your flood looked different: a business that closed, a relationship that ended, a year that took more than it gave. Starting over can feel like you need to rebuild everything before you are allowed to feel okay.

You can start smaller than that. Pick one thing you can do this week, about the size of ten meters of dike. Tell one person the truth about how you are. Write down what you owe and what you have, so it lives on paper and stops growing in your head.

If the heaviness lasts more than two weeks, or you can't sleep, eat or get through the day, talk to a doctor or counselor. That is a normal next step, and it helped Lito more than he expected.

If you want help starting today, HopeBegins is free. Pick how you feel and you get one small thing to try today, calming tools, someone to pray for you, and an e-coach you can message on Messenger. If you feel like you have lost your way, I feel lost is a good place to begin.