To yearn is to suffer

Have you ever loved someone so deeply that you’d search the whole world for them, even in the darkest place?

In the modern language of romance and relationship, yearning is a feeling that is romanticized, treated as the ‘beautiful’ longing and softness of wanting to be with someone.

But if anything, to yearn is to suffer.

And while it is a kind of suffering that history rarely talks about, especially when it belongs to women, Gregoria de Jesus was a woman who yearned in the realest and rawest sense of the word.

Beyond Bonifacio

I was given the opportunity to watch the block screening of Lakambini: Gregoria de Jesus, directed by Arjanmar H. Rebeta and produced by Ellen Ongkeko Marfil wherein it starred Lovi Poe, Elora Españo, and Gina Pareño (as Gregoria de Jesus), Rocco Nacino (as Andres Bonifacio), and Paulo Avelino and Spanky Manikan (as Julio Nakpil).

Before watching, though admittedly ignorant, I thought it was another film on Andres Bonifacio, but this time, it was just slightly framed from the eyes of his wife, where history often makes her simply just a side character. It’s not a far-stretched assumption when, for so long, it has always been the life of Bonifacio, specifically, that has been framed. I find it obvious that he is the hero whose story consumes the silver screen, as seen in Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio (2010) of how he is a man betrayed by his own brothers, and in Supremo (2012) of how he is the revolutionary hero, as well as in Bonifacio: Ang Unang Pangulo (2014) where he was framed as the heroic national father figure.

I assumed that Lakambini: Gregoria de Jesus was perhaps a rendition of classical movies for heroes, following the same formula: the revolutionary narrative, the bloodshed, and historical facts that add a new perspective on the same hero.

But with this film, while I came for Bonifacio, I stayed for the woman who held the aftermath in her hands but went unnoticed.  

At 18, Gregoria de Jesus, or Ka Oriang, an affectionate nickname, met Andres Bonifacio, who was 29 at the time – an age gap that was not uncommon during that time. In her autobiography, Mga Tala ng Aking Buhay, she talks about liking Andres months later, after knowing that Andres had already informed her parents about his courtship a year earlier. As Andres, though, was a freemason, which is considered a bad man, Oriang’s father opposed their love. Still, her father gave his consent because of his love for his daughter and because she told the truth. 

However, this scene was fast-paced in the movie, immediately imparting sparks without building it up the long and tedious way, as I imagine the words of Oriang herself in her book. I found the insta-love anticlimactic and rushed, but as the film failed to depict the actual depth, I see it not as a flaw. 

Simply because it is a clear manifestation of how their painstakingly tender affection naturally turned its page to yearning – a kind of depth that no screen or acting could fully capture.

Yet, as Gregoria de Jesus soon entered the ranks of the Katipunan as its Lakambini (woman leader), tragedy was never far behind.

Through darkness and hope

When the revolution reached one of its darkest hours, Lakambini allegedly fought alongside Andres, having crawled through mud, drinking muddy water, and fearlessly wielding a gun for protection and defense. In history, it is clear that she was not just a woman who played espionage and deception to gather intelligence and help keep the revolters a secret. She was a girl who fought, and I’d like to believe that love played a role in this, with how it sometimes demands courage that goes beyond words.

But when she and Andres were captured by the men of Aguinaldo, she was a girl who endured struggles that no one should ever face. When Col. Agapito Bonzon raped the Lakambini, to say that I was heartbroken is an understatement.

What kind of human would dare to dirty the society’s Lakambini, the symbol of courage and resistance, that way?

But what amazes me is how, even if it was already such a void of hopelessness, she still carried through with the same flame that I saw, which keeps her going: her unwavering commitment to the revolution and to Andres. 

And that yearning only deepened when Andres was sentenced to die and hacked over and over using a bolo. I understand a wife who grieves and is determined to look for her partner’s remains. I really do. But it was a whole different thing for me when Oriang moved through forests and rivers for 30 days to find Andres, resting only at night, despite her dress having been caked with so much mud, sweat, and dirt that it could not be burned due to its thickness. 

And it makes me wonder: have you ever held onto hope so tightly for someone or something that letting go was not even an option?

Following Oriang’s poem entitled Magmula Giliw, Nang Ikaw ay Pumanaw, she definitely has. And it’s the kind of yearning that does not fade with time or circumstance – a fact that the film successfully rendered, as they showed the aging Oriang crying when it was announced that Aguinaldo lost to Quezon in the elections. While she did marry her second love, Julio Nakpil, a loyal ally of Andres, she still carried the memory of her devotion, grief, and unfulfilled yearning that had shaped her life as Gregoria, Oriang, and Lakambini.  

More than a name in history

Women in history aren’t side characters left in the dust of the lead heroes. They’re living proof of how love, courage, and resilience inspire the present. Oriang, however, is not just history. She is all of us: the girl who fought, the girl who broke, the girl who was hurt, the girl who survived, and the girl who loved again. She doesn’t just live in films or documents, she lives in every one of us who dares to hope, to fight, and to rise. 

And that? That’s a story worth noticing, not sidelining.