A year ago, Jona Anies would sleep an entire day away, then drink from dusk til dawn.

It didn’t matter if she was alone or with friends. If she was drinking hard liquor or beer. Only one thing mattered — alcohol in her system.

The 19-year-old former college student said she needed to drink. She had to.

She was not addicted though.

She had no choice.

She wanted to stop. In fact, she tried quitting. But instead of getting rid of the problem, she experienced withdrawal symptoms: cold perspiration, asphyxiation, and violent shaking, to name a few.

Jona learned to drink in high school. She met friends who would often invite her to skip class and drink instead. “Just this once,” she remembers her friends saying. And she would reluctantly agree.

Drinking “just this once” became a habit. She realized this only when her grades started slipping.

So she decided to avoid her friends and quit drinking altogether. Her friends, annoyed by her decision, started to bully her. It was a difficult phase in her teenage years, yet she triumphed over peer pressure, and managed to graduate from high school with honors.

Her friends, however, were not as lucky. They were expelled from school due to misdemeanor in their graduating year.

Jona would often wonder then how the brush with alcoholism made her strong.

That was then.

Unfortunately, her serious drinking ordeal began in college. Her freshman and sophomore years went by like a breeze. She liked her courses. The people she met were unlike her friends from back home, but she felt a sense of belonging with them.

She was focused on academics and looked forward to a career in medicine.

In her junio year, her parents underwent a difficult time in their marriage. The situation got out of hand.

Unlike her previous drinking episode, this time she thought she was helpless. There was nothing she could do to fix the mess. Her parents’ marital problems affected her deeply. She lost focus and her academic performance began to deteriorate. She was back in her drinking habit.

To her, alcohol was an emotional outlet. It numbed her feelings and dulled her senses.

“Beer kept me from feeling the full blow of my depression. When I drink, I momentarily forget and I get blissfully unaware of the turmoil my life has become,” she said. She reached the point of liquor-dependency. She said she could not function without alcohol. It gave her a false sense of self-esteem.

She kept her problem from her family and seldom went home. She was clearly bothered but her parents couldn’t understand why. To her close friends, it was clear enough, and so they decided to intervene. They told her family the extent of her drinking problem; her family decided to act.

After a lot of arguments, self-blaming, unsaid apologies and realizations, Jona agreed to get inside a private rehabilitation center. She has been staying there for the past three months, and is now on the way to full recovery.

Asked if she has any regrets in life, her answer was simple: “A lot, actually. I let my anger cloud my judgment and get the better of me. The only thing I could do now is to put it behind me, move on, and learn from the experience.”

Her advice to people undergoing the same rough patch she went through? “It can happen to the best of us. The first step is to recognize you have a problem. Tell the people whom you trust most and ask help. Understand that they might do some things out of genuine concern that you might not like. Do not feel guilty. Some things are just out of our control.” (Ana Catalina S. Paje)

“I grew up in a small, close-knit town where everybody is a familiar face. The townsfolk practically knew each other. Gossiping was not uncommon, it was inevitable,” Gerozel said.

It did not come as a surprise when people began talking about her and her family behind their backs. It was a big deal in a small town like hers when she openly declared her sexual orientation in their local high school.

Gerozel Cabangon is a lesbian, or, as she refers to herself, a female woman-lover.

She has been so in the past 12 years.

The 28-year-old call center agent has been in same-sex relationships in the last couple of years. “Nobody forced it upon me. It was my choice and I am happy I made it.”

However, one thing she is not happy about is how society and her immediate community perceives her homosexual relationships.

Countless companies have refused to hire her upon finding out her gender preference. “Simply immoral. It’s against company protocol, the employer would say. I don’t know about them, but I am quite sure that my preference has no direct implication on my competence as an employee,” she said.

Even in her current workplace, she still gets degrading stares from her co-workers when her girlfriend visits her at the office. “Take it somewhere else. Nobody wants that here. You’re disgracing all of us,” she recalls one elderly officemate saying.

Often, in public spaces and vehicles, she gets snide remarks from random strangers for holding hands with her girlfriend. She feels less of a person by the way they treat her, although she she is never ashamed of her relationship. “I love my girlfriend. And there is not enough hatred in the world to make me unlove her.”

However, Gerozel says she is most affected when discrimination comes from loved ones. “They’re usually the people we turn to for comfort; they know us personally. So it hurts all the more when they are the ones to judge us.”

She thinks her parents felt they lost a daughter when she came out of her lesbian closet. “In their eyes, I am still the little girl I was decades ago. But I have grown up. I’m still their daughter, and Iove them very much. I want them to be proud of me.”

Gerozel has never felt any anger against the people who treat her differently because of her gender preference. She knows they are not to blame. She believes that society has instilled in us a hatred for things we cannot comprehend.

She hopes that someday soon, all people will understand that stereotypes and labels do not categorize people; they alienate.

“Yes, I am a lesbian. But I am a person, too,: Gerozel said. (Ana Catalina S. Paje)

I grew up in a typical Filipino family where parents try their best to give their children a good life. Even if the cost if leaving their family behind.

My father left us when my youngest sister was born. He was given the opportunity to work as a seaman. He had been waiting for this job because it brought a promise of a secured future for his children. He boarded the ship when I was almost three years of age. I had no memories of his departure. At that time, my mother was also working and we were left in the care of my father’s sister. From an early age, I knew I had a father; but I also knew that he won’t be there to see us grow up.

He was in the ship for nine straight months, and come home for three months when we’d have a physically present father. I remember there was a time when his ship docked in Manila; we hurried to the port and I saw the cabin my father calls home for nine months. Looking back now, his room symbolized solitude. He spent days with a complete stranger while I huddled together with siblings.

Material things, appliances, toys, and imported goods came as replacement to my father’s absence. One day, a package was delivered to our house. We had this big stereo and speaker set, but no voice of a father to listen to.

Back then, the high exchange rate assured us of three meals a day. We had enough money for our needs, and still had some left for our wants.

On months when my father was home, there was this overwhelming sense of awkwardness. I did not know how to approach him. Though there were lots of stories to be told, I did not bother. I thought my stories would not interest him. The great physical evolved into a much greater emotional detachment. There even came a time when I was not looking forward to his arrival. While some might say this is downright disrespectful and selfish, at that time I thought I did not want to live with someone I did not have a connection with.

We were strangers.

I did not resent my father for being away. I just did not know how to reconnect with him.

Fortunately, for us, my father made the first move. He told us stories of his voyages. He filled the gap between us with entertaining stories. He also approached us with gifts to ease the awkwardness. He made time to catch up.

He’s been a temporary presence in the past two decades. There are still times when I’d feel awkward when my father comes home. but it has been minimized.

Now, I look forward to going to the airport to see him after months of separation. This time though, there is not a single Barbie doll handed to me. But still I am eager to share my college experience with him, and listen to his own stories.

We are not strangers anymore; we are now family. (Vhernadette A. Oracion)