But now I am.

I am looking through my journals, my (defunct) blogs, my posted stories, my (xenocentric) art and I know that all those times I made use of the freedom of speech that I have so taken for granted ever since I could write or talk. I've made use of these things to express myself, to convey thoughts, or simply to rant. I'm on my instant messenger, passing stories around. I never really thought that I owed these things to anybody.

Now that I think about it, I do, right?

Thanks, Madam.

I wouldn't write my blogs if it weren't for the freedom you stood for. I don't think I'd even know what a blog was for. I was very young when my own mother brought me to that fated road, and I had no idea why I was there, or what the tanks were for. I didn't know that at that moment, everyone else around me had their hearts on their sleeves, and their guts in their throats. I didn't know why I was eating pan de sal with Star Margarine in the middle of the street. I didn't know why I wore a yellow dress with a yellow ribbon on my arm.

Now, as I tie yellow ribbons all over my car, I am thankful to the pleasant housewife whose passing the world mourns. I am thankful that I can write. I am thankful for everything I have taken for granted. I am connected with the rest of the world through what verbal (and artistic) diarrhea I put out on the Internet, and I am grateful. I am thankful that I know. You might not have been the one to guide my pencil with your hands, but you have given me---and others like me---the possibility. The chance.

You might not have taken me through the self-odyssey that was 2008, but thank you, nonetheless, because the prayer you made has affirmed something I had been asking myself, that I was not alone in it. I've jumped onto the bandwagon today, I suppose so, but it's one I shall be happy to stay on for a long time. I don't think it's something I'll regret.

Thank Him, also, for making you Filipino like me. I don't think I could bring as much dignity to the race in my whole body as you carried in your graceful little finger. You showed me the dignity good ladies, good PEOPLE should aspire to, the same one that earned you the respect of American congressmen in 1986.

I don't know what the future holds, for me or for the people bereaved of its "Mom". But thank you for showing me that what I enjoy now is a privilege, a gift, something worth protecting and preserving.

Paalam at salamat po, MY Madam President. Your life is a blessing to us all.