by Joy Louise T. Evidente
I am a child of nostalgia.
At 24, I continue to stubbornly play with a 2009 Nintendo DSi in my spare time and I will still favor Franks Footlongs and my grandmother’s age-old banana cake recipe over modern chicken burgers and desserts.
I long for the days where my only concern was the drama surrounding Barbie and the Bratz dolls in my doll house, and what pasalubong my lolo would bring home from work. My childhood, my past was idyllic. I look at the before times with rose-colored glasses the same way many do as they wish for a return to the past.
However, some pasts are not as lucky. Some pasts are darker, more impactful than a meal with mom and dad at Jollibee. Remember the 21st, many would say.
I grew up hearing stories of the great man, Bert. How he made Maharlika a better place, how he put the island on the map. To some in my circle as a child, he walked so Lee Kuan Yew could run.
My truth is that I sang the praises of a man that starved millions and hurt many more, all because it was all that I knew. From the ages of five to the embarrassing age of eighteen, I was deaf to the truth that the man that I praised was not what he truly was.
My classmates said he was not a hero, that he was the opposite- a villain! What lies they spewed! How could they say those things about my idol? All I knew I learned from the people I grew up around and none of them have heard of these human rights victims, none of them have been tortured!
Despite this, my classmates were calm and told me to read, they discussed their beliefs and urged that because I was a political science major, I should be better informed, that my opinion should be less of the chismis that I consumed about Bert and more fact-based. There is no fair debate when the opposition speaks in fantasy, my friends would say.
I took their advice, surely I can prove them wrong! I was a debater, I was an educated person, I can defend Bert better if I did my research. And research I did, diving into cesspool after cesspool of the truth. Bert was the reason why many people are no longer with us. Bert was the reason why we owned money to many lenders. How could this be the truth?
This made me question the words of all those people who spoke highly of Bert. The more I looked into the subject, the more the mask fell from my eyes. How was it possible that what all of these people have said, both good and bad, existed in the same space? Was not the truth good or bad only?
It took months after my research for me to realize that of course!
The same way my picturesque childhood is different from the childhood of the street child that begged outside the Jollibee that mom and dad took me, Jose’s recollection of hunger is just as real as Neña’s quiet afternoons at Aimee’s.
While the sun sets on one side of the world, the sun rises on the other. My truth is just as real as the truth of any other person out there, I have realized.
As we near the end of the Duterte era, and inch towards another Marcos ruling, we should remember that there is nothing wrong with romanticizing our past, as long as we remember that the bad things still happened.
THE BARRISTER 