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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Tuesday, August 26, 2025

entry arrow11:00 PM | I Will Never Have a Meaningful Talk With You Again



I have cut off “conversational privileges” from people. Two, in particular.

The first was curious: I didn’t know why I always felt deflated after talking to this person. Then I told myself, “Observe closely.” That’s when I noticed that while she would talk to me in a motherly way, the core of her message was apparently always, “You’re not good enough,” or “You’re wrong”—but coated with sweet words and even sweeter tones.

The second one was much the same. I would tell her of things that happened to me, often things that hurt me, and her responses were always to take the position of Devil’s advocate, making me doubt my own story. “Are you sure?” she would always say, always. Like, YEAH, I’m sure.

I value friends who tell me the truth, who call my bullshit, but when the negativity borders on the toxic and the pathological and the unempathetic, I need to draw the line. Both of these people are still friends of mine, but I try not to have deep conversations with them anymore.

I think of it as an editing of my own life, this pruning of conversation. It’s not about canceling people, or slamming the door on friendship; it’s more like quietly deciding which room in my house they’re allowed in, and for how long. Some people, I’ve realized, belong only in the living room, where the polite small talk resides, the weather and the traffic and the latest gossip about who married whom. Others, the rarer ones, are granted entry into the kitchen, where the smells of food and the intimacy of hunger live. The fewest are ushered into the bedroom, where the soul is naked and the conversation unfurls like secrets spoken in whispers.

It takes me a long time to make these categorizations because I am a sentimental fool. I want to believe that everyone means well, and I cling to the idea that if I give them enough chances, they will eventually rise to the occasion of kindness. But life keeps teaching me otherwise. There are people who will always lace their words with hidden barbs, and there are those who wear skepticism like a second skin, unable to resist the itch of doubt. And when you’ve been gutted enough times, you learn to protect the soft parts of yourself.

I suppose this is part of growing older, too. The curation of one’s inner circle. When I was younger, I wanted everyone to like me, and I mistook criticism for care. I told myself, “At least they’re paying attention.” But I now know that attention is not always love, and words that dress themselves as concern can sometimes be the most insidious form of harm. It’s like poison in small doses: you don’t notice it at first, until your body learns the pattern of sickness that follows every encounter.

Cutting off conversational privileges is my antidote. It is my way of saying: I deserve peace. My spirit is not an endless sponge for other people’s projections of inadequacy. My story is not a courtroom where I must defend my pain with receipts and affidavits. I have the right to speak and be believed. And if someone I call a friend cannot give me that, then friendship with them must be relegated to the shallow end of the pool, where the water never reaches the heart.

And so I keep my circle, smaller and smaller. But in its shrinking comes clarity. There are friends who tell me the truth in ways that do not wound unnecessarily. There are friends who, when I falter, say, “I see you, I hear you, I believe you,” before they ever say, “But have you considered this other perspective?” That’s how empathy works: not the bulldozing of another’s story with counterarguments, but the holding of that story with tenderness until it can be examined together.

I do not think I am alone in this curation. I know people who have done the same thing, often in silence, because how do you tell a friend, “I can’t talk deeply with you anymore because your words hurt me”? Sometimes it’s easier to just redirect conversations to neutral territories, to laugh over shared memories, to text emojis instead of paragraphs. The friendship continues, but with boundaries. Boundaries, after all, are not walls; they are fences with gates, and you decide when to open them.

The older I get, the more I believe that conversation is sacred. It is, in a way, the very architecture of friendship. We build each other in the words we exchange: the affirmations, the confidences, the jokes that stitch days together. To guard this architecture is not selfishness, but self-preservation. Because if you keep letting termites chew at the beams, one day the house of your spirit will collapse.

So yes, I have cut off conversational privileges. And yes, it sometimes feels cruel, even cowardly. But it is also necessary. I have learned to honor the weight of my own spirit. I have learned to be a careful steward of my own voice. And in this stewardship comes an unexpected gift: the conversations that remain, the ones I still have with the chosen few, are richer, deeper, filled with laughter that heals instead of barbs that wound.

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