FR DIARIES| How the War Changed Us

I still remember the sound of the bullets raining down that day. The sound that could end a life in the blink of an eye. The smell of soil mixed with gunpowder. The river’s cold touch against my trembling hands. I remember crawling, half-conscious, my legs refusing to move. I thought, so this is how it ends, this is how my life ends.

My children’s faces flashed before me, those tiny, innocent, full of life eyes and I thought, I could no longer see and be with them. I whispered to my comrades, “Leave me here, go and save yourselves.” My voice cracked as I began removing my botas, ready to surrender myself to the mountain that had witnessed too many deaths. 

But Tonton shook his head. “We won’t leave you.” Mimi, who already had a bullet lodged in her shoulder for days, said through tears, “If you stay here, we stay here. If you die here, we all die here. Pack one, pack all.”

Those words still echo in my head. That day, they pulled me, and somehow, I found the strength to move again. It wasn’t the will to survive for myself but it was for them. For the people who refused to leave me behind even when hope was fading like smoke.

That was the moment the war began to change in my heart. I began to question everything, not the dream of justice, but the path we took to reach it.

I joined the movement because I believed in a better Philippines. I believed that the poor deserved more than crumbs, that dignity should not be a privilege. But the deeper I went, the more I saw cracks within: the same pride, power struggles, and blindness that we condemned in the system we fought. There were leaders who refused to listen, who forgot that revolution begins in compassion, not arrogance.

No, I do not blame them. I only learned.

When my comrade Aldren was killed in Davao Oriental this year, it felt like finally a chapter closing. He was among the last of our group left in the mountains. A few weeks later, the rest were arrested. The war in Davao Region that once defined our lives was over, and maybe we were left to rebuild the meaning of peace.

Now, I live quietly with my wife, Leanne, the same woman who once marched beside me through the mountains, carrying both a rifle and our shared dreams of a better world. She was not just my companion in love, but my comrade in the struggle. Together, we endured the long nights of hunger, the endless marches under rain and fear, the aching silence after each firefight. She, too, has her stories to tell: stories of courage, loss, and unbreakable resolve.

Today, we walk a different path. We have chosen to raise our children not in the shadows of conflict, but in the light of our presence, together, as parents who have finally come home. I have learned to weep without shame, to find peace in ordinary things: building and selling computers, fixing car engines, laughing again, loving without guilt.

We still work with communities, but this time, not with guns or manifestos, only with open hands and open hearts. We help organize people in the barangays, guiding leaders to serve with honesty, humility, and compassion. It is not easy, change never is, but I have come to believe that this, too, is a revolution. A quieter one. A revolution born from listening, from healing, and from unlearning the hatred that once ruled our hearts.

I often think of my other comrades. We once thought we would change the world with our rifles and our courage. Maybe in a way, we did, by realizing that peace is the harder and braver fight.

The war changed us, yes, but it also taught us to love again.

We are not the enemies of the people. We were the people. And now, we are trying slowly and painfully, to find our way back home