Happy Mother’s Day, Mommy.

In normal times, we do not celebrate this day since, for us, it is just a normal weekend. But, this year, I suppose, celebrations are in order. My sister’s virtual school recognition day was scheduled this weekend, and my birthday was just days ago. The first long exam in my electronics class was scheduled the same day, so I’d told you to hold off any celebration because nothing was worth celebrating over scribbles of circuits and Bode plots on crumpled yellow paper.

The past year has been difficult for the both of us. For the longest time, I have been stuck at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. After senior high school, as soon as I entered UP Diliman, I wouldn’t stay for more than a few weeks in our house. I only saw you, my sister, and Daddy on weekends or holidays, save for the six-month gap between high school and college. In fact, I only went home during week-long holidays or semestral breaks.

For the past three years, I have been accustomed to being on my own. This has made me more independent. This has allowed me to take decisions, typically life-changing ones, that would normally be taboo or “too radical” for our family, which is steeped in values like respect for authority and, above all, patriotism.

In the months leading up to my enrollment in UPD, not a single day had passed that you didn’t tell me your rules: (1) Don’t join rallies; (2) don’t join “communist groups”; and (3) don’t become academically mediocre (“bulakbol”). But much to your disappointment, perhaps, barely a semester in, I already violated your triumvirate of thou-shall-nots.

A week into my freshman year, I joined the Collegian, which is not a communist group, by the way, but just a bunch of sleep-deprived neurotics who churn out drafts on a weekly basis. Being a campus journalist since high school, I had planned on joining the Collegian even before I entered the university. During my stay in the publication so far, I covered various mobilizations on- and off-campus. At the end of the semester, my general weighted average was two-point-something–far from the honors you and Daddy had hoped for me.

I can even remember your reaction when I sent you a photograph of my press ID. You were mad at me for not asking your permission to join an organization. That night you went on lecturing me, over the telephone, about so-called aboveground formations of the CPP-NPA-NDF–which, in retrospect, sounded like that spiel from Presidential Communications Undersecretary Lorraine T. Badoy in an interview with One News’s The Chiefs.

But that night, I did not say anything. Nor did I try to rebut your accusations. I know that your higher-ups at work have taught you those lies. I know that because you have even left a copy, on my old laptop, of various slideshows containing charts, like that unsubstantiated “Oust Duterte matrix,” showing supposed links between legal democratic organizations and the communist insurgency.

Not surprising, though, since you’d told me your work in the local police force here in our province came with a role in the localized version of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). And every time you would try to sell me your propaganda, I would just give you silence, the better to make you think I agreed with your claims.

For every article I wrote, covering various issues critical of the government’s policy, you would text or warn me of getting “brainwashed” by the things my sources told me. These sources are, more often than not, the target of the NTF-ELCAC’s campaign: progressive lawmakers, youth leaders, and members of sectoral organizations. Mommy, you were even close to warning me that I might get killed or arrested by carrying on as a journalist.

Now, we have been under the same roof for over a year already. During this period, you’ve seen how I work amid the weekly deluge of problem sets carefully balanced with my weekly lineup for the Collegian. At the same time, attacks versus activists–the very same people whom I often interview for my stories–escalated. The NTF-ELCAC’s spokesperson, Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade, even warned that their assault on progressives would go “full blast” in the weeks to come.

I know you can recall that time I covered the 50th General Assembly of Student Councils online. You told Daddy, on the phone, that I was busy talking with “the NPAs.” There were nights when you would barge into my room whenever you heard me in a Zoom meeting and castigate me for talking again with the communists, leftists, or NPAs–the variation of it would depend on your mood. You have even messaged me once, on Facebook, using your troll account.

Sometimes, your words would hit me. You would make me doubt whether continuing to write for the Collegian was still the best thing to do. I never talked back, knowing it would do nothing. And before I could write another draft, it would take a lot of self-convincing and self-encouragement to erase in my head your usual lecture. I even doubt that I can undo the years of indoctrination your institution has imbibed in you. It is like, in military-speak, we are belligerents in a psywar.

It must have been hard for you to live with the person your anti-communist propaganda attacks. And harder since that person is your first child.

I understand your struggles, Mommy. I know there is a risk that your organization might pick up on the relationship of that policewoman and that college publication writer who typically covers human rights violations. It is a risk that could cost you your work–our family’s prime source of income–and, again, I understand that.

So, I hope you understand me, too. Whenever I was away, I used to think of our house as a safe space for me. But, over the past year, that has not been the case because, much like in the outside world, persecution based on ideology has been a norm in this house.

Yet, slowly, I have observed that we have habituated to the reality of things, that I have grown into a person of my own: My thinking is no longer anchored to you, Daddy, or anyone. Notwithstanding everything else, I’m still your child–and that, Mommy, is a reality that would never be severed by anything. Despite our differences, it would not hurt to recall from time to time that we remain a family–and today is one of those moments. ●

The author of this column, an undergraduate student, has chosen to withhold their identity due to security concerns.