I am Earl Santos 2025.
I need to write this to finally let go of the year that has passed. To say goodbye is all that is needed . Saying goodbye, perhaps that is the hardest part. Often, we fumble for the right words when parting, but there isn't even perfection in the grief that we have experienced before the farewell. So to hell with perfection. To hell with the endless typing and deleting it for the sake of beauty. There will be no pleasure here—at least, not for anyone but me. Where do I begin? Perhaps it is in the night bus ride from Pangasinan where I told my dying lola that I loved her. Or maybe later in the year, when my father took his things with him and left home the night before my mother's birthday. Or maybe in the realization that I had been betrayed, that I was barred from running National Master Councilor because of trumped-up charges. To look at the year 2025 in hindsight is nothing short but to examine the anatomy of agonies. Each moment bled into one another, compounding grief u...