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 upon grief until familiarity made me numb. I could not feel as much anymore.

But then I joined the Upsilon Sigma Phi.

It's funny, I now introduce myself with the same year which broke me, hurt me, and left me alone in places I didn't know how to navigate. I have seen the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I have lost those I loved, and lost that which I fought hard to get. 2025 has been the heaviest year yet, but I carry those numbers now because it is the year I became an Upsilonian. 

Earl Jewelle Santos 2025—the irony speaks for itself. 

Are we shaped only when we are pushed through the rough? Do we only shine when we are crystallized?

Joining the Upsilon Sigma Phi did not erase the pains of this year, but it did made me busy in its line of work and brotherhood. It gave shape to the chaos. So no, 2025 was not kind. It stripped me down to what I could carry forward, and in doing so, taught me the weight of my own name.

I am Earl Jewelle Calipes Santos 2025, an Upsilonian--and proud of it.