For seven years, I have kept my silence.
With disconcerting thoughts, I have injected my veins with apathy. I have infused my brain with reflections of a selfish new me. I have permeated my consciousness with the dismal concept of your non-existence. I busied myself with the customary schedule an apolitical being would rather adhere to.
For seven years, I gave you time to help yourself.
I gave you the chance to renew your ways. All those times, you had the option to forsake those phantoms that constantly hound you. You had the chance to renounce ill specters that wander all around you. You had the chance to restore your dignity, not just to the entire world, but much more, to yourself.
For seven years, I have kept my distance.
I gave you the space that I thought you deserved and felt you needed. I shied away from you. My awareness of those pundits circling like vultures, ready to run you dry, did not matter somehow. You never appreciated people like me anyway. So why bother? You obviously don’t care. Why should I?
Succumbing to economic needs that are of essential but insignificant matters to me, I gave up on you. With both hands in my empty pockets and a nodding head, I left you. Across the seas I have ran away. I have tried hard to keep away from you. I tried…and tried… and tried. And for my own sake, I desperately tried.
I am not disappointed in you. I am with myself. And I am with Filipinos like me, who despite all things, still managed to keep their distance, kept their silence.
Seven years.
(A letter to my country, November 1st 2007)