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I have always wanted to write something about my -ber month season back when I first joined the Hive community. And now that September of the year took a first nostalgic trip down my suburban memories, here I am, writing them down like it was just yesterday.
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Let me just begin with the question we all wanted to answer, What do -Ber months mean to Filipinos like you? How valuable a Christmas season should be to an eighteen-year-old like me? Maybe if I was still the same young Arques who would've sported fancy black and pink striped clothes, I would say it meant the world. I think at least in those blissful years, I have experienced what it felt like to run free and watch the fireworks as if they ignited for me. Now the only thing I can do is wish that I would wake up early on December 25th and the only regret I feel is ditching Christmas eve to sleep.
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Long were the nights when we excitedly wait for my father's arrival at home before the Noche Buena. I have loved the way I always tell my Dad about the church even though all I did was doze off in the middle of a homily. I will never miss Halloween's trick-or-treat parties when all it takes is a scary mask to make my neighbor's kid cry. Or sometimes, that dim-lighted story-telling inside an open-space hut in front of the houses that locked us all night with the cousins. Because what is sleep when it's all horror and darkness, right?
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Those decorations, series of lights that were mixed with orange pumpkins, figures of witches and zombies on everyone's porches that stood dead with a little bit of sequence from Christmas balls, the colorful lights blinking 24/7 on big houses in the neighborhood, the parties from which I always received mugs and mugs and mugs, our 100-day countdown from September right after every news broadcast, my birthday greetings throughout October for my friends who celebrated every day, my ringtone like a crying swine that woke up the neighborhood every 4 am of November 1st, the carols from the same kids every day that made the house dark and silent because I switched off the lights, those gifts that we would never get enough from, family reunions, the Christmas tree, my favorite macaroni salad, and don't forget my birthday right after those midnight hangovers. Such a long celebration!
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As a family, it became a tradition to attend church and complete a nine-day mass before Christmas. They say wishes and prayers do come true when you never miss a day. Back when I was little, I couldn't get myself to wake up every time the breaking-dawn bell chimed around the neighborhood. Sleeping on puddled dreams was a frail body of an eleven-year-old kid, me of course. I would cry every morning until mom comes home because she was generous enough to let me have my sleep in peace. She will tell me how heavy of a sleeper I am and I remember dreading the next day as if a determination was tattooed on my forehead, but I was still dead asleep as if I didn't cry for it yesterday. Kinda part of me approaching puberty, I think so.
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I miss those times so bad. I had no idea of the world. I was a kid. Christmas was my favorite time of the year. It was just full of happy memories that I can't seem to get tired of. At last! I wouldn't worry about school anymore. I won't embarrass myself in front of the class for about 2 weeks. It sounded about right, and so it became meaningful to me. I think I just tend to grab every opportunity handed to me that includes running away from school. And escaping what I thought was a bad experience. I feel like Christmas made me retire somehow from being such a big loner, in the meantime. It made me recover from my friends that I lost because I'm not good enough to keep them. And it embraced me to a better world where I'm not entirely invisible at all, I still had a few people I get to see at every Misa de Gallo. We would exchange greetings and smiles as if we were best friends, those were the moments I would never trade for anything.
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The Christmas season was about finding comfort again within our loved ones or those who we treated like family. It's a chance for forgiveness, letting go of the past, and maybe fixing what was long ruined.
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Here's to a loving memory: The year 2012, exactly a decade ago from now, was a burial of my innocence and compassion for my once most-awaited season. I think it's true that we somehow die in the middle of those genuine days and then we only wake up again one day, that Christmas had been different. I'm not saying now that I hate it. I just lost all those petty and cute excitement I had, I think. When was ever the last time I experienced a year that felt like the definition of Christmas? It was so long ago. So old and decaying as if the remaining years never patched up what had been broken. Maybe it's part of growing up that you lost some of those sparks. That's what I thought not until I realized how those visible lines in between the vows of my parents were fading long before I knew.
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If you think about it, my childhood could pass as a family that some people could only dream about. It was my greatest gift—something I cannot exchange for anything, something I won't lose. And you know, it had been such destruction witnessing as I grew up that the family I have long cared for was like any other shattered piece I was so frightened of. I never had it in my mind that what I always prayed for every mass, was slowly burning to ashes. Maybe I'm many times as bad now because it's been years since I went back from the chapel. The pandemic may have subsided and yet I still haven't found my way back there.
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Counting down the days before Christmas was like dreading my birthday too. I think the world may have revolved around me when I was a kid, it looked like everyone was just as happy for Christmas every time my birthday followed suit. But unfortunate how it became something I don't want to remember anymore. Growing up with a broken family is not something I want to reminisce all over again during -Ber months. But it's embedded in the cold days of December that even a birthday cannot cover it up. It is not the same anymore. I have long accepted that this is something I cannot fix, but acceptance is not exactly the essence of forgetting. It's an ugly feeling, one that's holding onto the limbs of my anger that kept me alive.
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Christmas became a remorse for myself and my brother, the other half of all broken part of me. I will always be bits of my hurt and regret every time I think of him just as young as I was back then, witnessing how something he deemed unbreakable starts to lose its strings.
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This is how -Ber months tiptoed in my memories as if they're aware of what it was for me. It's more like a silent night than ever lighting a candle in the middle of darkness. And yet, it became even worse than all of what I had written above. December 16, 2021, is a passing sadness no one is yet to recover from. Ever since typhoon Yolanda back in 2013, I have never felt that strange heave of fear again in my entire life, not until last year. And as if the usual Christmas set-up, my father was not around when typhoon Odette landed in our city. Everything including electricity was shut down as if old roofs above our kitchen. My worry for a father who was separated was to the ceiling of our room. Will he be fine? Is he coming home when everything is okay? —were my thoughts all night. Not being able to celebrate Christmas with joy through a disaster is something closer-to-death kind of scary. Three months of the blackout were traumatizing. I think it made a hole in everyone's heart and mind.
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But you know what's good? The fireworks through the Christmas night. They were never gone. They lit up our darkened streets and something worthy from the past just resurrected that day, I guess so. It's not something to be thankful for, I know. Lives were lost, shelters were decimated, and everyone was struggling more than what we have to deal with every day. But is no one's fault that it happened and being able to find joy in the eyes of children despite everything is what hope does to people. I may have lost my thing for Christmas but I realized that I may have experienced the same with many people, it does not equal every new generation who still finds happiness in this season.
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The way my eyes lit up every time a song about Christmas started to wake me up every morning, is the same way kids in our neighborhood sing their hearts out to each door they knock on. Kiddie parties were still a thing and I can't believe I belong now to those people who cheered for me back when I was a kid too. Finding genuine felicity etched on the face of my sibling when he told me stories of his Christmas experience is a different kind of light that surpasses all kinds of fireworks. It's true, it became a self-acceptance having to realize that for a while.
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I guess in that short span of words, I have found something I never thought I needed not until I was able to write about it. Comfort found in between unspoken doubt and in the aftermath of that event is all I needed for my heart to heal. That my worry is not entirely futile because something about Christmas is still capable of saving a life. Despite a heart-wrenching ruin brought by the typhoon, we were able to seek help and are recovering for the better.
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Now, -Ber months is fast approaching again and I wish it will finally make up for all the things I regret. I want to fill it with the hope and that I have regained love in the same season I turned my back on it because I think it never really left. Christmas is after all the season of love at its finest.
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@rks.wuhdrelis
A warrior of liberty. With ink stains on her mind and soul. Maayong adlaw! This page contains the information you might want to know about the author. She goes by the name Arques and is under the username @rks.wuhdrelis. She lives in Cebu, Philippines, and is a proud Bisaya. She is a listener of music and is currently drowning in the rhythm of her pop-punk playlist. And she reads too, either depressing or hilarious books. Words from MJ, btw.
Arques is an 18-year-old girl, on a mission to her dream college and a writer wannabe is her reputation. There's a thin line between writing and music that enthralls her mind to scribble every time she has a chance to. To write is to dream and to dream is to be free. Except for nightmares, she believes so. She fancies writing prose poetries that is usually about childhood, life, love, tragedy, something peculiar, or even unnamed emotions. Stay tuned!
Photos attached were taken by me. They're random photos of the sky taken every after Misa de Gallo, pre-pandemic times.