Monsters

I’ve been getting a lot of hate mail recently because I’ve criticized VP Leni Robredo.

A lot of friends have told me how I am being tarred and feathered in other people’s walls and some of them have even shown me screen caps. Screen caps I don’t bother to look at.

And I don’t look at them because it doesn’t matter to me one bit what they say. The language of hate is wounding and I am wounded enough, thank you. If I’m going to get any additional wounds, it will be by the hands of people who matter to me, if I can help it. Not strangers I care nothing for.

Also, I tell my friends there is no need to defend me. That that is all part and parcel of democracy. I love it when they do, yes but there is no pressing need to. I would rather they focus their time and energy on worthier pursuits like sex. (O diba, nagising kayo? :D)

But also, I have a deeper understanding of my freedom.

There is a price I pay for writing with the kind of freedom I do. And it is this — that I awaken the dirt in other people’s souls and they mistake their dirt for mine. And they will spit at me and throw stones at me and try to deny me my humanity and lie about me — and it will be for no other reason than because I spoke my truth. A truth they don’t share.

And how they would like nothing more than to silence me.

And the funny thing is some of the most vicious ones I’ve encountered are people who think themselves decent and moral and virtuous. Teachers, college professors, bankers, Jesuits, Ateneans, people who fancy themselves buddhists even.

There is someone connected with Ateneo — as what, I have no idea. I don’t know him/her. Yup, I don’t even know his/her gender.

But time and again, s/he’s tried to pit me against my sister. And her/his theme, according to friends who’ve told me about it is how so much better my sister is (because, presumably, they share the same political beliefs. Yup. Another lazy thinker... or does this person even think?) My sister is precious to me. And right now we are on shifty ground. There is some discord between me and my sisters because of politics.

And family being what it is, it doesn’t take much to see that this definitely isn’t just about politics. That really, as far as I can see, a lot of these issues go all the way back to unresolved childhood issues and have insinuated themselves into our politics.

And I try to navigate these murky waters with as much self-care as needed for all the deep wounds that only family can give. And I am pretty sure, my sisters are trying their darndest too to navigate these same waters and with some difficulty.

I do know we will find our way back to each other again. There is a storehouse of love that exists still. At least, that is my hope. At kung hindi naman eh, I belong to the larger family of humanity. Ok na yon.

And here comes a stranger who has a problem with my political views and uses this cheap shot to get to me. Ateneo yan ha. And in that cruel post, you will see a Jesuit priest cheering him/her on.

Nga naman ano.

That’s the kind of decency and moral superiority displayed by the ‘disente’ crowd.

This must be why my favorite people on earth are the outcasts. I feel so much more at home with them than I do these respectable disentes. And how, I would rather share a drink with Marcos loyalists than these anti-Marcos ghouls who display behavior that proximate the hateful behavior of the dictator they abhor.

In the end they teach me to watch that I don’t let hate into my heart – not even for Ferdinand Marcos – this dictator I have hated all my life.

In the end, hate will hurt you. And I no longer want it to. I will fight the reinvention of Ferdinand Marcos and his family but it will be for reasons other than hate.

As the great Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

I have seen monsters. And they are all decent.