this story originally appeared in the philippine daily inquirer on september 21, 2006.
IT WAS PERHAPS ONE OF THE WEIRDEST DREAMS I’VE ever had. The first scenes were of armed men storming into my house while I slept. The next scenes happened in a large complex that looked like a school and mall (in my Dreamscape, two regular areas I dream in is one that looks like the Ateneo, and another that looks like a mall). Its layout had an uncanny resemblance to Ayala Alabang, although it seemed to be located somewhere in Quezon City.
More than the location, what bothered me, even after waking up, was the palpable sense of fear. Yes, fear. My dream-self was aware of the situation it was in—that of a dictatorship, or at least a regime where liberties had been suppressed—and I myself felt genuinely afraid. But it wasn’t the common fear of dying (especially having a gruesome death). This was no ordinary nightmare but one that seemed to cut deeper than the instinctive fear of dying. This was different. The horror stemmed from the context of martial rule and your sense of utter helplessness as you wished to do or say something and not being able to do it for fear that the dictatorial state would send its agents to pick you up.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to rant and shout my anger, but I couldn’t. Something was holding me back. Something was pressing like a vise at the core of my soul and preventing me somehow, even with the knowledge that it was a dream, from doing what I wanted to do. And I think that was where the horror was coming from.
I wasn’t born free. My mother gave birth in 1977, five years after Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. But I came of age in an era of democracy. One of my most vivid memories remains that of watching the Berlin Wall fall, and knowing at that moment, even as a preteen, how it felt and what it symbolized. I was in my teens at a time of celebration of democracy and freedom, part of the first generation of Filipinos to know how it feels like to be free. I was a young adult when democracy and freedom became the trend worldwide, despite all the troubles of the early 21st century.
The malls, the clubs, the coffee shops, the burning of the airwaves with cellular phones, the spreading use of the Internet, our generation’s celebrated—and sometimes lamented—outspokenness and abhorrence of limitations and control, even our propensity to come home in the wee hours of the morning—these are all things we take almost for granted like breathing, but they can only be possible within the context of the democracy our people won back after two decades of a conjugal dictatorship. Generation X and beyond cannot be what it is without the freedoms we enjoy and celebrate, even as some of us have started to have our own kids.
We have known no other world except a free one. We were too young to have known the fear and anger and frustration of those who lived under the dictatorship.
That is perhaps what truly made my nightmare of a land under dictatorial rule frightening: The suppression of something we haven’t experienced being without. I took part in the activities that culminated in the second people power revolution. I have been part of the youth movement at least since 1998. Even so, I operated within a democratic system, more or less. We were free to raise our fists against the status quo. We were free to question and even take to task those who ruled us. We were even free to call the President of the Republic horrid names, names we wouldn’t use against our most bitter foes.
We have known no other world except a free one. We were too young to have known the fear and anger and frustration of those who lived under the dictatorship. Those of us who were old enough to enjoy the stuff then can now only recall that we couldn’t watch “Voltes V” anymore and that all of a sudden the video game machines in SM Makati were not there anymore.
Since then, what we have known is a life where you can party till you drop or the next morning (and on the streets, too!), play video games until your eyes water, and watch all the animation, violent movies and adult flicks you can get your hands on. All we’ve known is a world where the worst we can get for speaking out or speaking against our elders is a slap on the wrist or a temporary grounding. Heck, it’s a world that even encourages the young to speak out and challenge authority. Being meek, silent and without opinion is just sooo … uncool in post-martial law Philippines.
But that night, confronted by the specter of despotism in a realm I was supposedly fully in control of, I felt fearful and powerless despite my loathing and my outrage. All I could do, despite my training and my experiences was press the mental equivalent of a reset button and wake up. Because I just couldn’t imagine living in such a world where I was not free to do as I wished, when I wanted to do it. I hope this is one nightmare that will not become a reality. For real life does not give you that option of waking up to a better existence if the current one has become too horrible.
