(Guia posted this on her Facebook page on 9 July 2025, hours after the 46th Commencement Exercises of the Mindanao State University – General Santos. Reposted with permission.)
GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / 16 July) — I was halfway through college when I was diagnosed with lupus.
It didn’t arrive like a storm. It came like a whisper: chest pains, skin rashes, fevers that overstayed, joints that ached, pneumonia that kept coming back. I thought I was just tired. I didn’t know I was already dying.
In October 2022, I was rushed to the ICU. This was after I had already been hospitalized on two separate occasions. I had gone into acute respiratory failure. My lungs were giving out, my body overwhelmed by pneumonia, septic shock, and a severe lupus flare. I couldn’t breathe. I was fading fast.
I was intubated. A tube down my throat kept me breathing while another one fed me through my nose. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I blinked when I wanted to cry. I traced invisible words in the air, hoping someone would understand.
Eventually, I made it out. I thought surviving the ICU meant the worst was over.
But a few months later, the breathlessness returned. I had pneumonia again. I couldn’t lie down without gasping. Even sitting upright felt like drowning.
That’s when they found out my windpipe had narrowed — tracheal stenosis, a complication from being intubated for too long. Scar tissue had formed inside my throat, and the air that once flowed freely now struggled to get through.
The only way to breathe again was through a new opening.
I underwent a tracheostomy — a hole was made in my neck and a tube inserted into my windpipe, giving my body another chance to breathe while my throat was recovering from the other procedure removing the obstruction in my airway.
When I woke up, I couldn’t talk. I had to press a finger to the tube just to make a sound. And for someone whose life revolved around music and story, this was devastating. I didn’t know if I would ever get my voice back.
Lupus, an autoimmune disease, does that — it turns your body against itself. I lost my strength. I lost my voice. I lost a version of myself I would never get back.
I vanished from school while the world kept spinning. My batchmates were out chasing deadlines; I was stuck in bed, flanked by an oxygen tank and a suction machine, swallowing tablets from a growing pile I stopped trying to count. Time didn’t wait. Classes went on. And I stayed right there — still, sick, and silent.
When I came back, nothing was simple. My doctor told me to avoid three things: init, puyat, at stress. Basically, the holy trinity of college life.
So I timed my walks with the sun. I carried a portable fan, a shawl, a cap, and an umbrella like armor. Some days, I couldn’t walk far. Some nights, I’d flare so bad I couldn’t hold a pen.
For me, each day started with the kind of exhaustion most people only feel at the end of theirs.
But I still went.
I still wrote.
I still sang.
And through all of this, Tatay was there. On days I couldn’t speak, he still knew what I meant. He’d sit beside me in silence, letting his presence do the talking.
He was the one who taught me how to write. He was a journalist, and everything I know about telling the truth on paper — I owe to him. 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 Nanay — she’s always been with me, too.
She passed away when I was 14, just before I could graduate high school. But even then, she left me more than memories.
She was a history professor at the very university I just graduated from. 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. Long before I knew the weight of a diploma, she was helping others earn theirs.
I graduate without my parents.
But never without their love.
My mother gave me music. My father gave me words. They are the reason I sing. They are 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 my Tatay, ZMulong Ini, who stayed beside me when I couldn’t breathe on my own.
It’s for my Nanay, Gemma Alivio Rebollido, 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.
This one’s for us.
𝐆𝐔𝐈𝐀 𝐀. 𝐑𝐄𝐁𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐃𝐎
2020 – XXXX
𝐂𝐔𝐌 𝐋𝐀𝐔𝐃𝐄
Bachelor of Arts in English Language Studies – English Language Teaching
College of Social Sciences and Humanities
Mindanao State University – General Santos City
Batch Maragsâ | Class of 2025
🏅 𝐃𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐦
🏅 𝐃𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐜
🏅 𝐁𝐚𝐠𝐰𝐢𝐬 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐞
🏅 𝐊𝐚𝐛𝐩𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐲𝐚 𝐄𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐞
🏅 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐧’𝐬 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 (𝐀.𝐘. 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟎–𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓)
𝐀𝐫𝐲𝐚 𝐌𝐒𝐔 – 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐒𝐔–𝐆𝐒𝐂
🎤 Vocalist (2018–2025)
🎤 Secretary (2020–2023)
𝐁𝐚𝐠𝐰𝐢𝐬 – 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐒𝐔–𝐆𝐒𝐂
🖊️ News Head (2024–2025)
🖊️ News Trainee (2023–2024)
𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬
📰 News Correspondent, MindaNews (2023)
📰 Stringer, Philippine News Agency (2022)
To every mic I held, page I wrote, and place I served—thank you.
All is well.
All glory to God.
