With unemployment and limited resources, we have found ourselves clutching onto the tiniest bit of hope we could find just to survive. We lived our days trapped in a sick routine that involved locking ourselves up in the confinements of our own homes, trying to pretend as if the four walls surrounding us weren’t driving us crazy. Every day had the same face. We could barely feel the months passing by and before we knew it, Christmas was gone and over, fireworks had begun fading in the sky, and we’ve entered a year that looks exactly like the last. It feels like nothing has changed — nothing but the circumstances and emotions we’ve buried deep inside our hearts.
Fear, anger, and determination. The more we think about it, the more we should realize how things ended up this way. We had a part to play yet it wasn’t our fault, and with the new year that entered and the new days it brought, one by one, we’re all waking up to this truth. 2021, despite having the same face as 2020, should not and will not end in the same way.
Last year, we hoped for the existence of vaccines. We rejoiced for the news that multiple countries have begun their research and trials, that each phase they finished was a step closer for things to return to normal.
For months we waited, and come 2021, we’ve got updates on the matter. Multiple vaccines that vary from prices and efficacy have turned up, and we could have gotten orders for the best one with a balanced status yet we didn’t. The year has just started yet we’re already facing the same incompetency we thought we left in 2020. We can’t keep closing our eyes to the reality that the people in power don’t have the peoples’ interests at heart — that they care nothing more than sinking this country to the ground to lift themselves up.
They’ve seen this pandemic as the opportunity to trap us, to make us believe that we’ve only got two choices: to settle for bad governance or to choose the lesser evil. But that’s the thing—if we keep choosing one over the other, we’re just going to keep falling into the same cycle, thinking that at least this one’s better than the last. But in reality, they’re all the same. We deserve better, and we always have the option to choose that, always and everyday.
We’re a year closer to elections, and politicians will try to bury the mess they have been during this pandemic and before, but we will remember every bit. We will remember their lack of urgency, their ignorance, and their nonchalance towards the people they’re supposed to be serving. We will remember the blood that stains their hands, the silent graves they dug behind our backs and we will demand accountability. We have the right to feel angry and determined, to feel like we’ve been robbed of the taxes we paid and keep paying.
We’ve gone through so much in the past year, from this pandemic to other natural disasters, people have suffered enough. We have suffered enough. It’s time for us to stand up against the government that keeps trying to silence us if we don’t want to relive the same nightmare in 2021.
We can never return to what was “normal” to us before, not when we’ve seen more of this horrifying reality we live in. Laws were broken by the ones who were supposed to uphold them. Who do we run to for help when the moment we open our mouths to speak against these multiple injustices, we’re shot dead before we can even make a sound? This has been going on long before the pandemic, and it’s about time we finally stop acting so blind.
This year may save us from being confined in the comfort of our own homes for months on end, but it will not guarantee our safety and well-being from the true villains that run this country. If we keep pretending and tolerating the lousiness and selfishness of the people we put in power, we’ll never see the end of it — we’ll never see the end of bodies that died in the hands of incompetency, of the money that was stolen by the hardworking people of this country. We’ll fear the day when our freedom only consists of speaking unworthy praises about the government, where any form of resistance is a call for death.
Even months after, we still find ourselves in the same place where we started. It has been a long time indeed, but if we play our cards right, we can change the course of our lives for the better. The vaccine is not the sole answer to end this suffering, but it’s just a step to start the change.
The previous year was hell, a living nightmare, and there were things that happened that we didn’t know were possible in real life but we made it. We crawled our way to wherever we are now, but we shouldn’t have to go through the same thing again.
We should know better by now, that the well-being of the people is nothing but a hindrance to the ones who are in power. We should remind them that if it weren’t for the citizens of this country, they wouldn’t be there in the first place. If there’s one thing we should learn, it’s that if we’re not being listened to, we just have to speak louder. 2021 will be the year that we can call ours, a year where we can demand the rights we have, and for the accountability that was long overdue.
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