You are not alone

By Jing Villamil

 

LOCKED-down, locked-in, locked-out. Whatever prettified euphemism you may choose to name the situation we are all in, there is no other word to better describe being “house detained”. My family had personally gone through this, soon after Marcos demolished the opposition by putting almost all of them in jail; the rest of the thinking, protesting people he strong-armed into fearful, silent submission.

Unfortunately, and sadly pa, what looms above behind beside and before us today is not one the same as the dark shameful cloud we lived with from Dekada Setenta to 1986.

This enemy is faceless, not even a life. This half-life enters us, burrows into us, then borrows life from us, floods us with its dire substance and hardens, shuts off our very source of life. If you survive, you will be a changed person; but you will always remember the fight in your half-conscious state . . . not to give in for love of life, especially for love of your loves. If you lose the fight, not for want of trying really, really hard, you cross from drowning pain from numbing cold to most fierce heat. To beyond. Alone.

I have an only son and an only daughter who are frontliners since day one. Every night, we see and talk to each other through Messenger. We smile, we laugh, we tell stories of the day’s happenings. At the end of each session, we bless each others’ foreheads, we kiss each others’ faces through the screen. We imprint forever the loves of our life into our minds, into our hearts.

We block the tears. We must be brave, we must be strong.

My children, (and I am sure you would wish to tell your children, too) “I am weak and with so much fears; but God makes me strong, and a bit more brave, that I might stand with you and hold your hand!

You are not alone. You are “never alone”.

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