I arrived to the office
today, anxious. I guess that was because I was only informed about presenting
before a group of visitors from the US at 10 pm last night and I was barely prepared. When finally it did not push through I
thought my anxiety was going to go away. For a few minutes it did go away, but
when I joined 12 relatives of victims sing before the same group this
afternoon, and heard them sing with conviction as well as almost breakdown and
become teary eyed in the middle of their presentation, I felt goose bumps all
over me and anxiety grow inside my stomach.

When I was asked to translate
some of the stories for the foreign guests, I could not help but become
emotional as well as I followed each word and relive with these relatives the
pain of remembering how their loved ones where abducted or killed.

My head ached, my stomach
turned. I didn’t know where to go, or to sit or stand. It’s as if it was June
2006 again and I was meeting the relatives for the first time and did not know
how to console them.

Yes, June 2006 is an
unforgettable month and date. It’s the month that marks the abductions of
Sherlyn Cadapan, Karen Empeno, Leopoldo Ancheta, Rogelio and Gabriel Calubad,
Prudencio Calubid, Celina Palma, Gloria Soco and Ariel Beloy.

It was as if a typhoon of
signal #10 overcame us. The incidents came one after the other. The office was
often filled with people, crying came at different times and from different
individuals.

One sat at one end of the
room staring into space. One sobbed inconsolably. The phones kept ringing, the
media kept coming, we kept planning and trooping from one camp to another. We
were desperate, the families were desperate. They needed all kinds of help. We
did not stop.

We have continued doing the
same things we did since then. We would find leads then dead-ends. But we would
keep our hopes up. In the end we became a family. And the loss of one, became
the loss of another. The search for one, was a search for all those missing.

Maybe I don’t know how they
feel, because I still haven’t lost a loved one, but I guess being with them is
almost the same as being the relative or wife or daughter or sister of a
victim. Maybe my tears are endless because even if the years have passed, the
stories stay the same and the pain never goes away, especially if you have a
remorseless government who insists that “ …there is consistent effort to POLITICIZE Human Rights in the Philippines” and a ruthless military who tries to make fools of
you, by giving you the runaround and continues to wreak havoc over civilians. Putangina
nila!

I still don’t feel good
tonight. I don’t know if I will have a dreamless sleep tonight, or when I will
stop crying.

I don’t really care for the
headache nor the stomach cramps, I just care, that we have families and victims
to look after and that if there are no one else to do this, who will? They only
have us. They trust only us. And in the end all we have is one another. We must
never stop.