Segunda Chance: Desta Vez, Não por Ele

Chapter One [ Returning home gives new hope and strength]

After going through all of her strange, arduous, and heartbreaking romantic encounters, she is dressed nicely for travel.

She is returning to the place where she was born and raised as a quirky, unusual pussycat who was also incredibly intelligent, vocal, and a little fighter.

The torrential rainstorms that destroyed all the family's plants and animals caused the farm plantation to collapse.

She left the city on a massive ship that had to travel a wide ocean in order to manage and settle the abandoned countryside, where she ran into her former ridiculed classmates.

At first, she was once-bullied, young girl who feels that love is a paradise of temptation. She believed that she was already properly attired as she entered the funeral service for her distant relatives who had perished due to misfortune, which was held at the end of the road leading to the school, market, and business district of the barrio, which was two kilometers by foot from the family farm on what were considered to be plains in the mountain slopes.

She is thrilled to be invited since her relatives, who are bright and have gone to school, are inviting her.

She was such a young, timid girl who is bashful, shy, and has not yet begun school.

 As she learned from the radio drama, she imagined herself as having a kind, quiet spirit that was also strong and courageous. She also imagined making fun of herself and acting strangely as she reminisced about her former life, crying out of embarrassment and laughing at the absurd things she did before putting everything behind her.

She is now learning to love and hate having her own career as she strives for a better life. Strong to cultivate abilities to leave her old environment and begin a new, better life while kicking the bullies out, she has gone from being a helpless, dependent girl to an amazing, brilliant educator of all who seek wisdom and love 'expectations.

She was born, raised, and completed her elementary and secondary education in the same country side.

She grows up into   an innocent, gentle quite-spirit young girl who doesn’t care how she looks pretty and amazing instead she chooses to dress like a pussycat and behave as an oddball to turn away all her line-up suitors who disturb her peace so much, which made her mother, sisters and friends taunted at her physical outlook although she has a pretty face and well curve body, smooth, fair skin and amazing good qualities and traits. She seeks love and wisdom through radio drama listening and wise people advise and she views love as a paradise full of storms but also the best weapon to overcome tempests as she dreamed to become a talented, skillful knowledgeable and stunning educator where her first love captivates through her simplicity and good quality traits.

Ericka Mendel Ibrahim was in her early 30s when she decided to move back to her hometown, which is in the southeast over a vast expanse of agricultural terrain.

She is considered to be a complete woman and is 5 feet 7 inches tall. She has long, black straight hair, big, almond-shaped black eyes that closely resemble those of her mother, a well-curved nose that is inherited from her father, thin lips, two dimples, cliff chinned features, smooth, fair skin, and long, well-shaped legs that make her look like a supermodel for high-end studio companies.

She has a beautiful, elegant, and alluring personality, which she has successfully developed via her prior training, seminar attendance, short courses, college degree, and professional education.

She also appears to be a woman of courage, strength, self-discipline, diligence, intelligence, and insight with compassion and a gentle, peaceful soul who seeks refuge in only God as a result of her extensive training in universal churches' active missions abroad.

It became apparent as she faced tragedies that caused her great suffering and were brought on by the companions who were supposed to be her best friends but instead seized every opportunity given to them by making up false accusations against her.

She is the person who never runs away from any conflicts but instead is fearless, persistent, and determined through obedience to defeat the opponents until victory is gained and take her proper place as a human being with all the rights and privileges to enjoy life as well as willing to accept victories and defeats as a part of it for a change to grow in characters and personality with other fellow humans.

She leases a modest location in the city that late afternoon in the month of December so she may have a secure place to store all of her legal documents, personal possessions, and other stuff.

She recently completed a three-month job contract in real estate; she made no money and gained only experience, which was worthless because she failed to sell any projects and received no commission.

She then works as a street sweeper for three consecutive contracts, wins second place in one category for street sweeper in a television programmed, and receives a $10,000 bonus. She used this money to save her husband and five children from total disappearance, but it also caused her husband to be apprehended by authorities and sent back to his native country.

For Ericka Mendel Ibrahim, who considered herself to be a champion of those who violate human rights, that would be a completely awful love life.

She was treated like a slave, the subject of sex attacks, and bullies while working as a dishwasher in a low-end restaurant until she realized she could return to the place where she was needed. In the end

After her husband left her and the family started to fall apart, she fled from the stalked sex maniac and social media intrigues.

She prepared herself for her vacation travels that late afternoon in her compact apartment in the metropolis by getting herself neatly and comfortably dressed. She is supposed to avoid looking in the mirror frequently, but she eventually gives it a quick glance because she finds it confusing and wonders why such a wonderful, stunning woman as she seems, deserve to go through such pains and suffering.

While her unidentified enemies tortured her covertly and fantasized about injuring her frequently, she didn't do anything to damage them and instead focused on falling in love with her first love and wanting to start a large family with him. So instead of hurting herself, she just convinced herself,

“Forget about them!”

She turns to face her gorgeous face and sniggers to herself about the occurrences as she says,

” One day, God will undoubtedly perform a miracle or something equally impressive to let people know that He is with them while hiding me behind His arms and broad, wide wings like an eagle that soars high even during violent, destructive storms. This will allow people to understand how strong, all-knowing, and everywhere present God is, as well as how infinite, everlasting, and ever faithful He is to those who believe in and trust Him.

She then turns around and looks in the mirror again to determine whether she is prepared to take on a new challenge and develops a positive outlook as a woman who has grown up and gained a lot of experience to deal with her previous old, traditional, conservative family, relatives, and elders who enjoyed making fun of her lack of courage and her tendency to dress like an odd, oddball pretty lass.

She rides a bus into the city and boards a sizable passenger ship to travel directly across a vast ocean to her hometown in the south.

She meets new people on the enormous passenger ship, as well as some of her old friends who dare to ignore her because they formerly bullied her when they were just little kids in their hometown.

She merely said,

“We can wrestle over the waves until the hungry killer whales can smell our bloody odors and swallow us all together. I'm ready to die because my family is all gone.”

She speaks as she continues to look at the group of five extremely visible males, knowing that they were her high school classmates in the town proper who believed they had the right to bully her since she was only a small farm girl.

"Not now, my beloved former adversaries. I'm still building up fresh strength after losing it due to past heartbreak and fractures, but if you started acting aggressively now, I could easily cast you all into the boiling waters. I have martial arts instruction from my prior husband and am a skilled swimmer.”

Ericka is mumbling, and she is aware that she is still plotting her retaliation against the people who bullied her as a child.

When they are face to face, Ericka simply laughs at them without saying anything, but they are trying to avoid her.

“This is it,” she murmured. “They have no right to bully me because they can see that I am taller, more beautiful, and more graceful than before. When I was younger, strange, and bizarre, I was. Hahaha!”

After some time, she finally made up her mind. "Hello!" she says as she grinned, greets them, even though she is still in grief from the previous calamity she had after losing her family.

"At least, I can solve the problem now without worrying that they will still be my friends. Maybe they won't be able to recognize me, so I should use a different name modelled after my husband even though we are already apart."

 Ericka made up her mind, but after a brief glance at the vast ocean, they vanished from her sight. She made the decision to remain outside the passenger’s area to observe the turbulent, raging sea waves sweeping, hitting the ship's walls as it sped so quickly across the vast oceans to reach the other end of the country region.

She also notices a family of foreigners walking by in the distance. They give her a quick glance because she appears to be familiar to them despite having a supermodel-like figure, a well-curved body, and no makeup on. However, no one can recognize her, or perhaps they just want to ignore her presence.

She would prefer to d******d Christian music onto her phone and listen to it when traveling alone because the scenery just serves to revive old scars.

She witnessed an unusual situation on the way to the high way of the zigzag road, where the bus driver was travelling on a narrow, zigzag road and suddenly emerging vehicles unexpectedly appeared along the front road in a high acceleration. This terrified her and the other bus passengers as the bus where they were boarding suddenly stopped, resulting in a painful impact that caused her head to push against the stiffed, hard iron bar in the bus windows, which caused her to collapse. Arrgh! What a pain, yet other people also experience agony!”

She watched them peacefully endure the unexpected, painful hit instead of against the hard wall of the bus because they were displaced, moved positions, and stacked on top of each other, causing the person beneath them to cry and others to wail for pains and shocks.

She makes a comment on how dangerous and careless the drivers are when travelling, disregarding the risk to people's lives. Despite her injuries, the police patrol who had been dispatched to resolve the situation quickly defused the situation with a simple apology.

After travelling for a while, she arrives home exhausted, starving, and in need of food.

 She is in a depressed state as she makes the long, difficult trek up the mountain slopes.

From the mountainside, she must ascend to the peak, where her family's native home has been constructed by the family of her older sisters.

As the road lowers, one can see the coconut and banana plantations that her father cleared of weedy, towering trees and replaced with a fertile, grass-filled plain field. It is positioned between her parents' rice farms on the other plain side of the mountain.

“I should be barefooted because my shoes will surely wear out if I wear them in this muddy, slippery, and stony road. That is not too much for me to take, even though it is exhausting to walk on foot in a land that is a kilometer away without anyone greeting me or grinning; instead, everyone seems to be staring at me with a smirk.”

Since she was a young child due to her dread of heartworms and other alive crawling millipedes on the ground, she has been walking barefoot while maintaining complete control over her Achilles hill.

“Maybe they tried to recognize me or they knew who I was but couldn't say hello! ”

 Ericka enjoys daydreaming about how her suitors, who were also their relatives,” They will be shocked by my  new personality after once referring to me as a smirky, snarling wild dog. Hahaha! And a wild running deer in the forest.”

She continues when she notices no one in her sister's home. She is determined to get to her parents' house at the bottom of the mountain.

"Everything seems to have collapsed and fallen into the muddy ground. That is why I have nothing to eat here right now," Ericka said. "I came here to rescues and settle an abandoned field after being wrecked by strong rainstorms and floods."

When Ericka saw the holes in the ceiling and the sunlight shining on her when she was taking a nap and it was already midday, she promptly got up after sleeping for an hour and remembering that she had spent the entire night on adventurous trips.

She could hear the chicken’s downstairs picking at something and the approaching footfalls.

Her older sister, who is getting too frail and elderly, arrived after observing movement within her late parents' old home.

Although her older brother was living there at the time, he appeared uninterested in continuing to do so following the collapse of all the resources.

“I tell you! Because he benefited from the benefits of our farm, our brother stayed there. However, when everything fell apart, he swiftly fled and is now nowhere to be found.”

Because of a family dispute over income sharing that her brother kept for himself while her sister suffered, Ericka's older sister is wracked with complaints and attempts to comfort herself in a cruel manner.

"Our brother is stingy. Now, he is nowhere to be found so that he may clear this falling tree and banana trunks scattered around," the sister said. "I couldn't even buy our coffee for early morning break."

Ericka simply listens as Ate Lorie speaks since she still finds it difficult to understand the problems.

Instead, her sister inquired as to whether she had brought any groceries for the family.

” What do you have here for nibbling, Sis?” Ate Lorie asks.

“I just have one potato chip for you. I was breaking when I arrived here. Lani, our first cousin, told me to come to our farm because our brother has been missing for two weeks following the typhoon, “Ericka said, adding,

“What transpires with him, Ate?”

As her elder sister chuckles saying,

"He has nothing left to eat here because the flood wiped away everything except for that pair of chickens, and I can't discover any proof of how they got here because, as far as I know, all the vegetation and cattle here were washed away by that powerful, terrible typhoon."

"We are just fortunate that we built our home on a mountaintop where floods cannot reach it, except for the powerful wind that shattered our roofing and smashed the walls and sent us all shivering in terrible colds," one resident said who is approaching to greet Ericka and welcomes her.

Because those tragedies had previously been a playmate for them since they were children, they both just laughed at the violent winds.

"Nothing had changed in how we faced and accepted it," said the group. "We are growing used to it anyway."

Ericka consoled her sister, who began munching on a potato chip.

Suddenly, (Ringing of phone call)} “Hello!”

 Ericka smiles as she notices Ate Lorie responding by pressing the yes button on her tiny, old-brand cell phone with a keypad.

"Ate Lorie, who is your caller?”

Ericka enquired while looking at her phone's text message inbox.

"Our niece Regie alerting us that we are expecting surprise international visitors."