Reacclimatizing to reality
Summarizing the last seven months of my life in my attempt to accept that it happened, it's done, and there's still life after it.
I’ve always been uncomfortable when people thank me for the work I do, particularly when the work I’m doing is involved in politics. Unfortunately, the nature of the work I did for the 2022 campaign put me in the direct line to receive these kinds of comments. As always, I’d duck my head and murmur, “Ah hindi po, salamat sa inyo, sa suporta niyo.”1 But during the Miting de Avance in Makati last May 7, a man I came across wouldn’t allow that kind of talk, and I’ll never forget it.
I was on my way backstage from the tech booth when the Sumilao farmers made their exit, and so I stopped to thank them for coming. All day I’d been crying, randomly tearing up at the smallest things, and this was no exception. As I shook their hands and wished them a safe trip home, tears welled up in my eyes and I didn’t bother hiding how happy and overwhelmed I felt. Then a man appeared (as always, guests found their way to restricted areas) and he asked if I was in the production team. “Ah, hindi po, comms po.” “Ah, talaga? Salamat ha. Ang galing niyo.”2 As usual: “Thank you po, magaling po tayong lahat kasi tumitindig tayo.” Unusual: “Hindi, ang galing niyo talaga sa comms. Sobrang galing.” His hand on my shoulder, patting to emphasize his point: “Ang daming na-convert dahil sa mga ginagawa niyo sa social media. Isa nga ako doon.” Me, fully in tears: “Hala, grabe naman kayo sir pinapaiyak niyo naman ako.” Him, laughing and pulling me into a hug: “Salamat. Salamat sa buong team niyo. Ang galing niyo.”
I walked back to the tech booth in a daze, mostly intent on running away. V, all business, said, “Wala akong headspace para sa iyakan, trabaho muna tayo.”3 And so we did.
To be too close to something often means it does not permit prose. If I loved less, I could write more. Maybe that’s why in 2019 I wrote about the elections and its results immediately—because I wasn’t involved in the slightest. One of my main regrets from 2016 was that I didn’t document it better. For a long time I put off writing about it because it hurt to do so, and eventually, as the pain subsided, as did memory. I don’t want to make the same mistake this time.
Online events: January 2022
Back in 2020 my friends and I would joke that in the 2022 elections there’d simply be no more COVID. “Or, kung meron pa, sortie over Zoom na lang,”4 we said between laughs. So imagine my horror when, two years later, that throwaway comment turned into reality.
Online events brought out the worst in me, mostly because of their absurdity. They were announced after I’d had my brush with COVID, and hot off the heels of two-week long relief operations. Those things, along with everything else, made it surreal to set up sign up sheets for a call with the Vice President of the Philippines. More than that, the Zoom calls were always mired with some kind of difficulty.
Thank god for J, who had more technical experience than all of us in setting up and running online events; we assured each other that with our powers combined, with two years of the pandemic under our belts, these events should be a walk in the park… Or so it should have been.
I suppose a rule of thumb in a campaign, more than in any other job, is that Murphy’s Law will always hold true.
Naga, Camarines Sur: February 2-9
So much of this campaign rested on the fact that there wasn’t any choice; we just had to do it. Naga was exactly that—a series of unbelievable events that we had no time to freak out over because we just had to do it. I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for a week.
When trying to write this, I worried the most about sounding self-congratulatory, or seeking praise. I’m not. I just never want to forget that time that D and I were up until two in the morning scribbling on a torn up long brown envelope, discussing routes and timings for the documentation teams.
I don’t want to forget the night before the official start of campaign period when I stayed up to help laminate IDs and car passes, and after around 10 phone calls, cried at 11:58PM because some people were so mean, and V joked: “She really said, I’m not crying on D-Day.”
How, on the day, J and I were walking to the venue of the main rally and we stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to draft a caption for a Facebook Live that had been cancelled, reapproved, cancelled, and finally approved two minutes before the event itself. We both didn’t know the term used for celebrating mass, her being a protestant and me being generally terrible at Tagalog.
I don’t want to forget how the hotel we slept in—it had been turned in to the headquarters of the volunteer group leading the events—turned into a strange, adult summer camp where we’d all wake each other up for our morning cigarettes, which always precluded a moment of mutual reassurance. “We’re on track, right?” “We’re on track.”
There are things I’d like to forget, though: Mistakes I made that haunted me throughout the campaign. But the same applies now as it did then: There’s nothing more I can do about it, not really.
Iloilo City, Iloilo: Feb 21-26
When people ask me about my favorite sortie, the answer is immediate: Iloilo. Iloilo is the place where it feels like everything came together: We tapped around 30 volunteers, many of whom were college students, and meeting them remains one of my happiest memories.
Surprisingly, this is also where I got to take care of myself the most. I journaled every day, and read myself to sleep. (Even if that meant journaling at one in the morning, or, like on event day, sleeping for two hours and journaling after sending the documentation teams off at 5AM.)
We also shot interviews at a Kansi restaurant and midway through the interview the restaurant owner’s two French bulldogs started barking, so I ran outside to play with them so that they wouldn’t be heard in the video. I think that’s a pretty accurate picture of how life is like in a campaign.
More than anything Iloilo highlights how deeply good food can heal and save me. I ate diwal every day, and only ate fast food once—past midnight after drinking. This, coming after Naga where we had bar chow for dinner almost nightly, was a balm I didn’t think I needed. Before our flight back to Manila, we made sure to pass by our favorite restaurant (one we jokingly said we’d gatekeep from the rest of the team): Monkey Grounds. I still think of their coffee sometimes.
Zamboanga City, Zamboanga; Isabela City, Basilan; Pasig City, Metro Manila: March 14-20
Zamboanga is memorable because it was my first time to visit the region. Also on the day I arrived, I rode a speedboat to Basilan for a meeting I didn’t know I had to attend. It’s a good thing I wore a collared shirt for the plane ride, but there’s no real excuse for the fact that I was in sweatpants as I went to met city administrators. I rode a RoRo back to Zamboanga port alone, much to the chagrin of D. Later, as she berated me for not bringing anyone in the team with me, she said: “Sa ating dalawa, ako yung dapat walang survival instinct! Hindi ikaw!” Anyway, it’s not like I ever truly felt unsafe. I also ate taho on the boat—they serve it with condensed milk.
This trip to Mindanao was also very memorable for me because it’s where I finally established trust in one of my teammates, G (who, before then, was known to be late to events). He covered 5 sorties all on his own, and we coordinated remotely even if we were both in Mindanao.
In Zamboanga we set up shop in a Arya, a café near the hotel and spent almost every afternoon there because they had reliable WiFi. It was also here where the team travelled for six hours to interview a former beneficiary of Angat Buhay, then brought him back to Zamboanga City so he could attend the rally. The rally, which was something like “politics, but make it Woodstock/Coachella,” and was dampened (hah!) by heavy rains that only let up when Leni got on stage. T and I turned to each other in tears, the iyakins of the group, when Leni had to stop midway because a butterfly flew by her.
The true highlight is the fact that we didn’t have to be anywhere the next day, and so for the first time in the campaign, we got to properly drink after an event. We also drank with the senatoriables and with some of the volunteer artists who stayed behind.
Upon arriving in Manila I went straight to HQ for the second round of debates, and none of us had the mental capacity to even consider the logistics of the Pasig event, which was held the day after. On Sunday morning, D texted me:
It turns out we were right to be nervous; never in my life did I have to drop the “I’m staff” card as many times as I did during those six hours. It was also the first time in my life that I yelled at someone. It’s an uncomfortable memory, and I know that there were definitely better ways to handle that level of frustration and stress. I was too ready for things to take a turn for the worst. And then I became exactly that.
Quezon City, Metro Manila: March-April 2022
Two debates and two radio ad recordings always came immediately after provincial events. The radio ads are especially memorable to me because I helped Leni pronounce words in Bisaya properly, and it was also the only time during the campaign period that I’d been back at the OVP.
The debates, held in the Katipunan HQ proved more than anything to be a test of my organizational skills and battling down the ever-present mania. (It didn’t always work.)
San Fernando, Pampanga; Dagupan, Pangasinan: April 6-April 9
If I think too hard about April, I get a bit of a headache. So much happened that month, but there are some standout memories. First was Pampanga/Pangasinan, where, due to a lack of manpower, we brought a volunteer with us to help shoot interviews and do other pre-work.
R, a former intern from my days at OVP, was also the assigned writer for the trip. It was because of her that C and I went to Pangasinan; over the four hours in the van together, it was nice to reminisce and see how R had grown into herself. I remember complaining, too, about going to Pangasinan at all; I generally dislike the flatlands of Central Luzon because the last time I made a trip there I got heatstroke and vowed never to return. Still, I had to go, and it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the venue of the event was the same as the venue of the sortie I covered in 2016. But back in those days, the event was indoors, and there were certainly less people in attendance. It was the third time this had happened (the first being in Sorsogon, and the second in Iloilo) and despite the repetition it still boggled my mind, the amount of people who would stand in the rain, for hours, just to see her and hear her speak.
I’ll always be grateful to C for being so game to do whatever, even if that meant joining me for a day trip to Pangasinan and staying in one of the scarier hotels in Pampanga. I’ll never forget how, on the night I got back from Pangasinan I discovered that the key to my door was broken and I had to walk back and forth that dark corridor that had a two-foot statue of Sto. Nino at the end of it and its sepulchral lighting. Are horror movie tropes a necessary experience each campaign, I wonder?
Pampanga is also where T and I ate at Souq almost every day because it was delicious and so we felt that we needed to bring every new teammate who arrived in the province there, as proof. We ate there for lunch right before heading to the venue, not at all expecting it to be what it was—historic in so many ways.
For one reason or another, I was asked to stand by the stage during the program proper and it was there that I saw all the farmers assemble. Up close, it was impossible not to cry when they went onstage for the surprise. Even worse, from that far back, you couldn’t tell how big the crowd had gotten. I felt my knees go weak when I got a notification on my phone with the total crowd estimate, the largest so far. Surreal that only a few months prior, we’d gone wild with the 15,000+ crowd in Naga.
Mandaue City, Cebu: April 18-21
Before the start of the official campaign period, I would often tell my friends that this campaign was different solely by virtue of my role: It didn’t make sense for me to be all over the country because I had to manage other things as well.
By April, I’d accepted that provincial events were inescapable for me. The events kept getting bigger and bigger, and as the team was stretched thinner and thinner because of the demanding schedule, gaps had to be filled. What I was sure of, above everything, was that I had to go to Cebu before the campaign was over.
It was one of the rare trips wherein I badgered my boss about it constantly. Despite my efforts, it seemed like I wouldn’t be allowed to go; there were 20 days left in the campaign, and each hour was precious. Then, at the last minute, I booked a flight for me and a teammate because we’d found out just how large this event would be.
A day before the event, R was scrolling through her feed and found out that there would be a fluvial parade the next morning, before all of Leni’s events. After being passed around multiple volunteer leads, I finally found out more information about the event (that Leni wasn’t even attending) and G and I agreed to wake up at 6AM to make it—and I’m so glad that we did. We were in the water for an hour with over a hundred boats, and by the end of it he and I couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces. Though no longer required, we decided to interview the Vice President of the fishing cooperative who organized the event, and I found out that they’d pooled money to buy gas for the other boats who were short on cash. Leni and Kiko were the first candidates they ever supported to this degree, and this was even before their community was visited mid-February. I cried a little while we spoke, thankful that I was sitting beside G and no one would see me.
The rally itself was overwhelming. I stayed backstage because I had to keep my eyes open to coordinate a photo-op with a lady whose daughter’s tweet went viral. It was only after that I found out about the minor disaster in the tech booth, where someone had tripped over the wire and half the tech booth went dark for a while (AKA, my greatest fear and the reason I lost it in Pasig).
Pasay, Metro Manila: April 23
In my journal on April 20, I wrote: “This April 23 event is really a test of everyone’s patience and mental fortitude.” And what a test it was. In hindsight, all the events held in Metro Manila were the most stressful. It’s probably because there’s no way to run away from the other work we had to do; there was no comfort of distance.
A had asked that we shoot all of the celebrities saying certain lines for a video, so G and I were thankfully spared from the heat for the most part of the day. This idyll was of course soon shattered when I ran into B, who was apparently looking all over for me. “I need a drone shot from EDSA stage,” he said. To which I replied, “What, now?” I knew there was no way I’d make it through the crowd that spanned over a kilometer over Macapagal Boulevard. So I went farther backstage where the road is still passable and approached a man on a motorcycle to ask if he could possibly do me a huge favor. Thankfully he did, and I rode all the way, waded through the throng, and reached the tech booth—of the second stage, near SM Seaside. When I saw R, who was assigned lead for the area, the first thing I blurted out was: “Oh no.”
So I waded my way out of that crowd and back onto a street, then found another man on a motorcycle who did me another favor. When CB and I saw me backstage at EDSA, they were incredulous. “How did you get here?” “What the hell are you doing here?” Superfluous questions, especially when we were all faced with the reality that there was no one amongst the 40 volunteers who had a drone. Thankfully, however, a random citizen did bring one and we got the footage we needed.
Baguio City, Baguio; San Fernando, Agusan del Sur; Makati City, Metro Manila: May 1-7
The Last Week of the campaign deserves the capitalization. Even if only on the logistical level: On May 1 we rode up to Baguio. On May 2, immediately after Leni’s speech, we headed to the hotel to take a quick shower and rode back down to Manila, straight to Terminal 2 for our flight on May 3, 7AM. We arrived in Butuan and rode for three hours to Agusan del Sur, and I went straight to a meeting. After the event in Agusan del Sur on May 5, we left at 5AM on May 6 to make it to Butuan for our flight. Upon arrival in Manila, I went straight to Makati for the final coordination meeting for the Miting de Avance.
First, Baguio: The first time I saw a tech booth that was free of any cigarettes and smoke. Everyone knew better than to test how strict the local government was about their smoking ban. Except for me and C, half an hour before Leni’s speech, when we finally caved and asked a policeman if there was anywhere nearby we could smoke. So, as instructed, we hid behind two container trucks and smoked. It was our first conversation in months, after passing each other during events and texting each other from time to time.
Then, in Agusan del Sur, I received a hard reminder of the fierce regionalism that has cropped up because of Duterte. While at first the local leads were mad at us, they immediately warmed to me when I spoke to them in Bisaya. On our first full day there (AKA, after the marathon travel from north to south), I also overslept because my work phone died, and only woke up because SB was calling up my personal number. I answered quickly and after answering his questions, he said: “Kakagising mo lang, noh?”5 It was 10AM, way past usual the usual start of our day. “Hehe. Opo sir,” I said, still wiping sleep from my eyes. “Sige, mumog ka muna,” he said with a laugh.
Truthfully, I don’t know where to begin when writing about Makati. I cried as soon as the program started. I spent an hour sitting on asphalt while waiting for people to come pick up their IDs from me (and when, or why, did I become ID distribution for that day, still boggles me). I cried when I saw my parents at the guest area, and I said to them, “You’re here! We’re all here! It’s finally done!” And after all this time, maybe that was it—the sheer relief of knowing that we’d made it. We had walkie talkies and I spent a little over an hour trying to coordinate the delivery of chairs for one team stationed near the old stock exchange building. Then it was all a matter of getting posts out. While Sharon spoke, I reviewed videos that needed approval. By the time that Leni was onstage, it felt like I was on my last legs—but thankfully there was a random citizen who’d come by the tech booth to give me a second wind.
Election Day
On Election Day I told my friends to stop doom scrolling and check back by midnight; anything before that would be too soon. It’s not like I needed a reminder that Murphy’s Law is basically constant in a campaign, but by 10PM we could all see the numbers. First the numbness of shock and disbelief (so: denial). Then, “but we haven’t gotten the precincts that are pink,” or: bargaining. Being called to a quick meeting with SBA about what was going to happen next, and here was anger. In the stunned silence that followed, I looked at D, A, V, and J who had stepped away, and the realization and acceptance was immediate. “I’ll tell the team,” I said, because I was the one who’d worked with them most closely. Walking up to the comms room felt like walking towards my own death. How was I going to say it? Why me?
Inside, they were still watching the news, and the mood was subdued. Likely because Robin Padilla was being interviewed, so I turned the TV off. The collective relief was immediate. I’m pretty sure someone said, “Hay, salamat.” And then I told them I needed to make an announcement. Briefly, my talking points:
This is not how we expected tonight to go, but I think we can all see the numbers.
It’s not that we’ve reached a mathematical impossibility (at least, not yet, according to D), but we need to prepare for that eventuality.
We can’t say yet if a concession speech will be delivered, but we all need to be emotionally prepared for that, because we’ll need to release materials on it.
Okay, breathe. Remember, above anything else: Hindi tayo nagkulang. We did everything we possibly could, and more. We all know how hard we worked, and we did good work.
Oh my god! If you start crying I will too!
When you’re ready, let’s all go downstairs to be with the rest of the team. Dry your eyes, because there’s still media in the lobby.
It’s okay. It’s okay not to be okay right now. But also know that we’ll be okay.
Depression came hours after as I drove home at four in the morning. Big, fat tears finally rolled down my cheeks as Rosas came up on my playlist.
I haven’t cried much since, but when I drove down Ayala recently my heart did twist as I visualized the areas that had thrummed with activity: There was the stage, and there was the tech booth, and that’s where I cried for the fourth time. I hadn’t felt hope as strongly as I did that evening on May 7, but I trust that the feeling will return. In 2019, after seeing the election results, I wrote: “There's a small light in me that will grow and grow and will find a way to do something. I don't think that's true anymore. I wish I were dead.”
It took a long time to get here, to get to a point of being too old to be blindly optimistic, but also just old enough to recognize that it’s easier to be hopeless—and so unlike me to be so.
I don’t know what comes next, not yet. During the campaign we’d joke about how quickly the days would go, and since the elections it still feels like time continues to go as quickly. Just this morning I was shocked to realize that the new president is going to be inaugurated in five days.
It’s an uncomfortable feeling, not knowing, and it’s why it took me so long to write this. After seven months of always knowing (of having to know), I feel distinctly detached from myself with all this emptiness.
In the days after the elections, I saw all the friends I stopped talking to during the campaign. It felt like I’d just come home after a long trip. Of course the question that everyone asked was: what are you going to do next? I didn’t have an answer then, and I still don’t have one now. It horrifies me each time I have to admit it—it makes me feel weak, or stupid, or lazy, especially after coming from a campaign where knowing was currency.
It feels, in a way, like full circle. Before the campaign I took a break from working. For the first time in my life I resigned without a next job lined up. Serendipitous, maybe, that on my third month of unemployment Leni announced her bid for the presidency. But now I’m back here: unemployed, unmoored, and still struggling to accept the need to breathe.
There is always life after a campaign. I think I can only truly start that life when I stop being so scared of it. Every morning, upon waking, I think to myself: “I need to find a job.” But after all this, I think what I’ve been looking for is something to run to, because I’ve been running away from the campaign and losing (again).
This was the first step in confronting and accepting what transpired. What comes next will come with time. For now, there is memory, and hope, and trust enough in myself that when the next step does come, I’ll be ready to take it.
Horses at Midnight Without a Moon - Jack Gilbert
Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her. The summer mornings begin inch by inch while we sleep, and walk with us later as long-legged beauty through the dirty streets. It is no surprise that danger and suffering surround us. What astonishes is the singing. We know the horses are there in the dark meadow because we can smell them, can hear them breathing. Our spirit persists like a man struggling through the frozen valley who suddenly smells flowers and realizes the snow is melting out of sight on top of the mountain, knows that spring has begun.
“Ah hindi po, salamat sa inyo, sa suporta niyo.” Oh, no, thank you for your support.
“Ah, hindi po, comms po.” Oh, no, I’m in the communications team.
“Ah, talaga? Salamat ha. Ang galing niyo.” Oh really? Thank you, then. Your work is great.
“Thank you po, magaling po tayong lahat kasi tumitindig tayo.” Thank you. It’s thanks to all of us, because we’re all fighting (for this) together.
“Hindi, ang galing niyo talaga sa comms. Sobrang galing.” No, it’s all you. The communications team is really great. “Ang daming na-convert dahil sa mga ginagawa niyo sa social media. Isa nga ako doon.” So many people changed their minds because of the materials you make. And I’m one of those people.
“Hala, grabe naman kayo sir pinapaiyak niyo naman ako.” Oh gosh, you’re too much - you’re making me cry.
“Salamat. Salamat sa buong team niyo. Ang galing niyo.” Thank you. Thank you to your whole team.
“Wala akong headspace para sa iyakan, trabaho muna tayo.” I don’t have the headspace for tears; let’s get to work.
“Or, kung meron pa, sortie over Zoom na lang,” Or if there were, maybe there’ll just be campaign sorties over Zoom.
“Kakagising mo lang, noh?” I bet you just woke up, huh?
“Hehe. Opo sir,” Yes, sir.
“Sige, mumog ka muna.” Okay, go ahead and gargle first.
Pangga, you did your best actually even more than what was expected from you. Time will heal and things will be better. You are still young,smart and gorgeous something alot better will come your way pa. I love and missing you much❤️👍
a beautifully written account of the past 7 months behind the scenes 🥺 thank you for all that you’ve done for the campaign, Ms Nadine and team! 🫶 —amrt from sox :)