Tuesday, August 26, 2025
11:00 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.
Labels: enemies, friends, life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, July 07, 2006
9:55 PM |
A Short Note to Piranhas
I am not under any obligation to make you or anybody happy, but if you are seriously offended because your sensibilities are so refined, I
can take that into consideration and
perhaps even do something to make your discomfort bearable. God knows, I
must ask for your forgiveness that you
had to stumble into my blog and witness my wanton displays of selfishness, my bottomless greed for awards...
(Palanca here I come! You're mine, Fully Booked! I am after you, Free Press!) I can only wish that you know who I am first before you start throwing rotten tomatoes at me. Just because I write a blog does not mean
this is all of me, and that you have the perfect right to size me up by the momentary craziness that passes for posts here. I do not, for example, call you a coward for hiding behind anonymity and leading us to deadends that contain only empty Korean words, because I do not know you at all... and frankly I do not really care about you. Lastly, don't crucify me just because you or your friend did not get shortlisted. Maybe you can try harder next time. Maybe you can vent all that fury into passable fiction, and perhaps you don't have to go around some other people's blogs anymore and act like the Great Inquisitor, sniffing great evil just because i can type
hehehe and italicize it as well.
And oh, I should tell you that Haloscan's great. It bans.
Labels: enemies, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, December 09, 2005
5:27 PM |
Annoying the Kitten
Someone posted sa chatterbox...[annoyed kitten]: futureshock is so NOT your book, sands and coral yun. remember that. please lang.
I replied...[ian]: hay, bahala ka annoyed kitten, i-annoy kita to the max. [futureshock] was MY conception, it was MY work, i edited the whole thing, [and] nobody except ceres [pioquinto] helped me. so bahala ka na sa world mo. ahahaha!
[ian]: ceres just told me to use sands [and coral] for the funding, with [the blessing of librarian lorna yso -- who holds the funds -- and with the] president's approval. [futureshock was conceived from the very beginning as a book, and it happened to be] the only s&c that was nominated for a national book award, so pikat na lang nimo. so unless you have anything else to say, kiss my ass.
by the way...
annoyed kitten's IP address is 202.133.209
so, konting IP tracking lang, and this is what i came up with:
IP address: 202.133.209
Hostname: Not available
ISP: Internet Service Provider
Davao City, Philippines
Country: Philippines
inetnum: 202.133.192.0 - 202.133.223.255
netname: DCTECH-MICRO-SERVICES
descr: Internet Service Provider
descr: Davao City, Philippines
country: PH
admin-c: EA70-AP
tech-c: RB111-AP
mnt-by: APNIC-HM
mnt-lower: MAINT-PH-DCTECH
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
remarks: This object can only be modified by APNIC hostmaster
remarks: If you wish to modify this object details please
remarks: send email to hostmaster@apnic.net with your organisation
remarks: account name in the subject line.
remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20031027
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20041122
source: APNIC
person: Eugene Alfante
nic-hdl: EA70-AP
e-mail: ealfante@dctech.com.ph
address: Ponciano Reyes Street, Davao City
phone: +63-917-7006623
fax-no: +63-82-2212382
country: PH
changed: ealfante@dctech.com.ph 20041117
mnt-by: MAINT-NEW
source: APNIC
person: Ryan Bentulan
nic-hdl: RB111-AP
e-mail: rbentulan@dctech.com.ph
address: Dctech Micro Services Inc.
address: Dctech Bldg
address: Ponciano Reyes St.
address: Davao City 8000
phone: +63 82 2212380
fax-no: +63 82 2212382
country: PH
changed: cdolera@yahoo.com 20021222
mnt-by: MAINT-NEW
source: APNIC
Someone from Davao hates my guts, and frankly I don't care. Being a detractor is such a pathetic, stupid enterprise. If you think I'm bragging too much about FutureShock, I have bragging rights naman. I sweated blood on that thing, alone, and here you are telling me to back off? Start meowing somewhere else, Annoyed Kitten.
Labels: enemies
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Thursday, June 16, 2005
12:25 PM |
Disgusting. In Other Words, Read It and Get a Good Laugh.
What do you know... Bachem Macuno f*****d Anne Coulter in the a**, hard. But does Anne Coulter have an a**? Tell me. I'd really like to know.
Labels: enemies, politics
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Yes, there are good Christians with good hearts. (Mom is one.) But don't you think this one really gives Christianity a bad name? Fundamentalists. No wonder I don't go to church anymore.
[via search for love in manhattan]
Labels: enemies, religion
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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