The sun’s out with its mellow light showing a clear sign of what’s up ahead––a beginning. 

All that happened yesterday becomes a blur. The parties, dinners, the echoes of fireworks and car horns, the “goodbye and thank you” messages, the closure that we’ve been yearning to have for us to completely move forward, the people who have left, and the ones who stayed; these things leave a bittersweet ending to the year that has tested our wits and pushed us to the limits of our limits. 

We deserve a pat on the back, a roaring cheer from the crowd, and a cake for surviving the horror of 2020. We may be limping from the ache, our eyes may be red from all the crying, and our will to strive may have taken a huge blow, but what matters is, we managed to finish even without flying colors––even if we exited without avoiding being unscathed. 

And now, we take a step forward to the better things, to new sunrises and sunsets, to new beginnings, to meeting new souls that may become a part of our lives or rather be someone who would be a friend to others, to new challenges, to new levels of extreme, and to having more chances in starting anew. 

But there shouldn’t be an act of forgetting that sometimes, this is not the case for everyone for struggles don’t vanish overnight. The heaviness of circumstances that we cannot escape continues to weigh us down and so, at times, all we can do is sit quietly and bask in solitude or at most, gather all remnants of courage and strength in our bodies to conquer the storm one step at a time. 

It is the first month of the year; the sun’s out with its light––it’s just there being anything that we want it to be, may it be hope, strength, light, or whatever––waiting for us to stand up again and bravely face the unknown of what this year will bring. 

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Flashback to the moment when Mayor Isko Moreno declared a one-week suspension because of the Coronavirus outbreak. At the time, we didn’t know that in a few months, everything would change completely. I remember the rush my body felt as I filled up my laundry bag while talking to my friends via video chat and how eager I was to go home. A lot can happen in a week, right? There was hope in the air, nothing would fall apart, after a week we would hurry to our classrooms for the first period with iced coffee and we would chat with our blockmates about what we did during the break—it was simple. 

Looking back, I wish that we could have been more cautious but then again, we can only do so much. Walking around the campus, seeing everyone wearing facemasks, showed how compliant we were. Placing alcohol and sanitizer dispensers at every building entrance, having our temperatures checked all the time, practicing safety measures—we did everything that we can and maybe that’s the reason why it has become frustrating to see the parts of what made our college life worthwhile, fade away. 

I remember the rush my body felt as I filled up my laundry bag while talking to my friends via video chat and how eager I was to go home.

Where the street is packed with students ordering buchicake and pancit canton, where fast printing services are found, and where the smell of smoke sticks on uniforms, Antonio now can no longer be recognized—empty and quiet, without any hint of fast-moving footsteps. 

In Asturias, where the crowds usually hangout in between periods and lunch breaks, a desert lies. The busy Jollibee had closed, leaving traces of memories within its walls. Its fate, similar to the convenience stores around the university, all covered with blank manila papers with no notes of return. The McDonald’s in P. Noval shut down, I remember walking by and seeing how packed it was every single day, especially during exam seasons; how it shined so bright under the midnight sky where Noval was silent, sleeping, getting ready for another busy day. 

Breakfast dates in McDonald’s Carpark come to mind, the long lines and full tables, the water dripping from the roof outside, wondering where it came from. How shattering it was to see that it closed down. It was one of the go-to food chains inside, who knew that it would end up the way it did? Not me, not in a million years. 

Antonio now can no longer be recognized—empty and quiet, without any hint of fast-moving footsteps. 

Remember how the golden sunlight covered the whole field? How it passed through branches and made you realize how easy it was to love mornings in UST? How the uneven pavement made your friend almost trip, making you laugh then after, it happened to you too? The scorching heat whenever you pass by Plaza Mayor and getting caught up by the 12 o’clock prayer, preventing you from taking shelter to avoid the heat, the long walks in lovers’ lane at night where you awkwardly pass at couples, the slow-paced walking of other students along UST Health Service, and the fountain in Q. Park that’s capable of giving you a heart attack everytime it bursts. It’s funny because I used to dread those moments but now, they are the ones that I truly miss. 

During October, the Paskuhan season starts, the lights all over bring magic to our lonely and tiring days. Now, a plain skeleton of the Christmas tree stands tall beside the grandstand with no company.

Remember how the golden sunlight covered the field? How it passed through branches and made you realize how easy it was to love mornings in UST?

It’s saddening. Eight months in and we still don’t know what the future holds. As for now, we only rely on the power of technology, on the spontaneous zoom calls with friends, on binging series and movies, and even just by taking a deep breath. 

If we only knew what would happen, we could have taken the time to feel that one last hug from our friends, to take time in eating at our favorite place, to spend an extra hour in the library, to walk slowly towards our buildings––enduring the simplicity of a normal day, because right now there is this lingering guilt that keeps on making us realize how we took things for granted and to be completely and brutally honest, I think we’re nearing towards the breaking point.

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“Adu met lang ti nagsiyaatan na idi tiempo na, uray komporme ti ibagbaga da,” (“No matter what they say, he did a lot of good during his time.”) my grandpa would always say, while I was sitting on his lap, listening to him retell stories from years past, eating balikutsa—a candy made out of sugarcane, one of my favorite Ilocano delicacies.

I remember not knowing much then, as one would expect from a six-year old with barely any conceived awareness. I was too trusting of the stories I was told as a little girl, owing to my naïveté. Whatever my elders said, I always assumed were correct. Whatever my hometown patronized, I saw harmless. It was not until years later that I understood everything.

They said it was the Golden Age, the years dating back from 1972 to 1986. There was discipline and barely any crime, and the value of 1 peso was equivalent to that of 1 US dollar—it was almost like a folklore back in the province, shared by the collective memories of fellow Ilocanos. They called him Apo Lakay and built statues in his memory. In the North the people pride themselves for speaking in the same language that a late dictator once spoke. To them it was a language that held a significant amount of heft. A significant amount of power. One that could take over a country and leave it with nightmares decades after.

“Nasimsimple pay ketdi ti biag idi,” (“Life was a lot simpler back then.”) they would often say. Everything I knew about Martial law was an inherited memory from my hometown, weathered down by the works of historical revisionism and misplaced loyalties. There was nothing true about what I was told. There was nothing to celebrate about Martial law.

At some point I wanted to unlearn the dialect largely because of shame, I wanted to outrun the identity of being an Ilocano. I wanted to believe that it wasn’t going to be the defining feature of my being one—this urban legend of a fascist who was responsible for the deaths of many and the shared trauma of Filipinos that persist until this day.

And so in place of those ill-conceived tales, I try to reconstruct them through stories that I learned were more historically correct. I start with my little cousins, so they don’t grow up brainwashed with toxic regionalism like I was as a little girl. They will grow up to learn the words ‘fascist’, ‘kleptocrat’, and ‘democracy’. Through this I take on my grandpa’s place in telling stories by telling mine, this time more accurately, this time in favor of the ones who greatly suffered in that so-called Golden Age. There should be no place in Ilocos for immortalizing a dictator.

I could hear the crickets nearby. I could sense grandpa was nearing the end of his stories. I could tell his legs were numb from sitting me on his lap for hours on end. I barely understood his stories, I was only six years old. The last balikutsa melts in my mouth. He says, “Dagijay nga taw-en ti kamayatan para dagiti Pilipino idi.” (“Those were the best years of the Filipinos.”) No, grandpa, those were the lost years of the Filipinos. I wish I could reach into years past and tell him he was wrong.

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