I was halfway through college when I was diagnosed with lupus. It didn’t arrive like a storm, but like a whisper: chest pains, skin rashes, fevers that overstayed, joints that ached, pneumonia that kept coming back. I thought I was just tired, but I didn’t know I was already dying. In October 2022, I was rushed to the ICU, where I had acute respiratory failure, my lungs giving out, my body overwhelmed by pneumonia, septic shock, and a severe lupus flare. I couldn’t breathe and was fading fast. I was intubated, with a tube down my throat keeping me breathing, and another one feeding me through my nose. I couldn’t move or speak, and it was devastating. Eventually, I made it out of the ICU, but a few months later, the breathlessness returned, and I had pneumonia again. I couldn’t lie down without gasping, and even sitting upright felt like drowning. That’s when they found out my windpipe had narrowed, a complication from being intubated for too long. I underwent a tracheostomy, a hole was made in my neck, and a tube was inserted into my windpipe, giving my body another chance to breathe. When I woke up, I couldn’t talk, and for someone whose life revolved around music and story, it was devastating. I didn’t know if I would ever get my voice back. Lupus, an autoimmune disease, turns your body against itself, and I lost my strength, my voice, and a version of myself I would never get back. I vanished from school, and my batchmates were out chasing deadlines, while I was stuck in bed, flanked by an oxygen tank and a suction machine, swallowing tablets from a growing pile. Time didn’t wait, and classes went on, but I stayed right there, still, sick, and silent. When I came back, nothing was simple, and my doctor told me to avoid three things! init, puyat, at stress, basically the holy trinity of college life. I timed my walks with the sun, carried a portable fan, a shawl, a cap, and an umbrella like armor, and some days I couldn’t walk far, while some nights I’d flare so bad I couldn’t hold a pen. But I still went, still wrote, and still sang. Through all of this, my father, Tatay, was there, sitting beside me in silence, letting his presence do the talking. He taught me how to write, and every word I’ve ever typed carries the weight of his belief in me. But just when things started to feel like they were finally turning around, I lost him too. Tatay passed away before he could see me walk across that stage, and the silence he left is the kind that echoes everywhere, in every draft I’ll never ask him to edit, in every song he’ll never hear me sing again. But I carried us both to the finish line, and my mother, Nanay, she’s always been with me too. She passed away when I was 14, but even then, she left me more than memories. She was a history professor at the very university I just graduated from, and the classrooms I sat in, the hallways I walked through, she once stood there, teaching, guiding, giving. Long before I had my own voice, she was using hers, and long before I knew the weight of a diploma, she was helping others earn theirs. I graduated without my parents, but never without their love. My mother gave me music, my father gave me words, and they are the reason I sing, the reason I write. This diploma is not just for me, it’s for every version of myself that flared in silence, that submitted a paper with shaking hands, that almost gave up. It’s for Tatay, who stayed beside me when I couldn’t breathe on my own, and for Nanay, whose light I still carry in the way I live and love and learn. To everyone surviving something invisible, something incurable, something devastating, I see you, and this one’s for us.
