Sometimes I wonder if pushing back at classmates who bragged that they do not read for leisure could have helped prevent the media illiteracy epidemic that we have today.

Every single one of the astronauts who went to the moon and back on Artemis II was educated at a public school.

Thinking of the teachers who poured into Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen tonight. You helped send a kid to the moon!

🌕 💛

Crimes fly when you're levying war.

We should thank MAGA. They revealed the civil war never ended. It just used quieter ways of prosecuting war on the vulnerable.

It's gotten better and worse at times. Worse since the Powell memo.

But the war never ended.

The Epstein class are enemy combatants.

Not really going through it now. Just venting that people I used to see as friends who are progressives didn't turn out to be as progressive as I thought they were.

Yes, please, next week. The 7th?

3. People who said that my wife's behavior including the violence was justified because of her sex.

4. People who told me that this was already the sin of lust and that I needed to ask my wife for forgiveness.

And almost all of these friends come from the same side of the social spectrum as me.

There were other friends, of course, ones that I have cut off:

1. People who theorized that I deliberately placed the diary on my table for my wife to read.

2. People who said that I deserved it because, in effect, I was already cheating

She said something along the lines of "sayang naman." To her, I ought to apologize since I was the one with the bigger "sin."

Was this the same person I used to work with whenever we had cases of domestic violence in Buenavista, Marinduque?

She proposed meeting up with O for a breakfast buffet at a hotel along Roxas Boulevard. She asked if there really was no hope of reconciliation. I told her that with the physical violence that happened and that I was kicked out, I was not going to crawl back.

Both O and A were there during our wedding (after all, they witnessed me during the early awkward days of courting my spouse) but it was A who knew about my struggles so, of course, when the separation happened. I told her about it.

I told her that this was part of my coping/defense mechanism to fight off the unwanted feelings aside from creative writing (which produced a short story that got published recently). And she told me that there was nothing wrong with feelings.

It was nice to see both O and A again but because it was O's special day. It was A and I who were talking. She noted that I looked good with the weight loss (around this time, I think I had already managed to shed more than 5 kg from an all time high of 140).

In October of 2023, around the time I was going through the previously mentioned crisis of identity, which was falling for an office-mate despite being married, I received an invitation to O's 50th birthday which is held in the NCCP headquarters along EDSA.

I left Marinduque in 2013. She and O, who was her partner-in-crime, stayed for two more years before going back to traditional community work of organizing farmers and other peasant workers in 2015(?).

2. The next friend is A who I met in Marinduque where she was a development worker in the Norwegian NGO operating there. She was one of those who replaced my stalker in the barrio (long and complicated story).

We criticize cis-hetero men for being emotionally stunted but when they do open up, we make fun of their feelings?

It was at this point that I made a comment about how stupid her post was and then unfriended her immediately afterwards. Whatever she chose to do after this is on her.

A few weeks later, she makes a post mocking about the male social media reaction to "man or bear" with "woman or tree." Even if it was such a petty clapback, there is still a valid point.

It was probably my fault because I did not ask about her headspace. And, besides, her brand of feminism is that women can do no wrong unless they side with a cis-hetero male. She said that I was guilty of cheating and I deserved what happened to me.

Early in 2024, after the worst had happened, when my wife kicked me out of the house after I was beaten repeatedly with fists, feet, her mobile phone and hair brush, I disclosed what had happened to M. And I was shocked at the lack of sympathy.

Later that same year, during the height of my crisis of identity, she re-shared a post about micro- and emotional cheating things that did not just muddled the way I saw myself, it made me feel like I had already crossed the line and committed adultery.

[TRIGGER WARNING: SELF-HARM]M made a vague Facebook post back in early 2023 where she threatened to kill herself. She credits my calling her repeatedly on Meta's Messenger app that stopped her from jumping off a building in Naga after parking her car.

1. M was someone I met through a hobby group mostly through online interactions and then it was a huge bonus that we both had the same opinions about some of the members who were either full of themselves with regards to their looks or took way to pictures of women members during meet-ups.

It's weird. These were friends who I considered ideological allies. Whose values with regards to certain social issues closely align with mine. Let's talk about the two most prominent that come to mind.

Was it to help me process? Probably not. The way they said this was partial if not full condemnation of my actions. Was it to help themselves process because now they were seeing a story through the eyes of a cis-hetero man and now they want to cover their bases? Maybe.

Aside from the heartbreak that was the separation which happened two years ago, I was shocked and disappointed with the words some of my friends chose in their attempt to give an alternative viewpoint, another angle for reasons that remain a mystery to me.

I've been stopping myself from writing this on Facebook because I have enough common friends (or are still friends with the people involved) that they will probably know that I am referring to them.

A letterpress card in cream with all caps writing: R.E.M. GAVE ME UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS FOR HOW I'D FEEL AT THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.

A greeting card for my Bluesky friends

The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. God hears the cries of the workers. You have lived in indulgent luxury. You've gluttonously eaten in days of sacrifice. You have condemned and murdered the innocent to silence these truths.

Sure!

Me: *gets repeatedly told during writing workshops and by casual readers that my dialogue is clumsy*

Also me: *gets short story published consisting exclusively of dialogue*

There's a silver lining. The short story I wrote as catharsis/method to channel the unwanted feelings got published: philippinesgraphic.com.ph/2025/12/30/l...