claire o. walhon. writing about love, lupus, and liberation. please click "keep reading" for full post. posts are shortened for scrolling ease.IG: @claireismo | claire-obejas.medium.com
Humility, Kindness, and Warmth: In Memory of Vince Francis "Ka Poy" Dingding
I've spent the better part of the last 30-something hours trying to figure out the best way to tell my stories of Kuya Ding's brightness, sharpness, humility, wittiness, and humor. His patience, kindness, and warmth.
But the grief is a little paralyzing again now barely a month since the Negros 19 massacre. Ironically, he was the first person I thought of when news of the massacre broke.
But I will say, Kuya Ding was always larger than life. His presence cannot be contained in words.
I may be spent from writing tributes to our fallen comrades, but I am also always so, so proud of them for persevering in fighting a system that creates oppressive conditions where resistance is a necessity.
That said, please read the Facebook post by Nagkahiusang Kusog sa Estudyante about him; the life he lived as a staunch student leader, youth activist, and labor organizer; and the path he eventually took to pursue the highest form of struggle, as someone who saw and experienced firsthand the rot of the system that creates landlessness and abject poverty. A system that thrives on the oppression and exploitation of the Filipino people. A system built on the violence that sets the fertile soil for more radical means of dismantling it—something that many like Kuya Ding believe to be the only solution when elections are rigged, state forces regularly commit human rights violations with impunity, and justice is elusive.
At the same time, in tandem with our recognition of the rotten system, we must call into question the legitimacy of the military operations that took the life of Kuya Ding and his companions. Given the track record of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in summarily executing wounded, ailing, and/or elderly Red fighters, especially since the declaration of the MO 32 and EO 70, it is not outside the realm of possibility. The International Humanitarian Law, (IHL), of which the Philippines is a signatory, prohibits attacking combatants who are no longer able to fight or have surrendered or were unarmed at the time of the incident.
Contrary to the propaganda the military is pushing, even war has rules, rules that they have consistently violated, such as the case of the Bilar 5, which included fellow UP Cebu alumna Hannah "Ka Maya" Cesista. The Bilar 5 were tortured and then killed despite having surrendered, according to eyewitness accounts. Violations to the IHL are war crimes.
But despite the grief and rage I feel, Kuya Ding is now immortalized as what he always was to me: a symbol of the persevering, ceaseless, and tireless spirit of a true revolutionary. As one of the people who organized me as a baby tibak, he helped shape the foundation of how I would be as an activist. I've even kept this screenshot of a post about his graduation rally speech in my files for years now.
I remember covering this graduation rally as a freshman student journalist in UP Cebu 10 years ago now and I remember marveling at the sheer militance of Kuya Ding and the student movement.
Kuya Ding shaped an entire generation of activists who now continue to serve the people in an endless number of ways, but, most importantly, with warmth, kindness, and humor.
Rest in power, Ka Poy! I spent a good 5 minutes crying-laughing when I found out you had chosen that as your name, because of course you did!!! You really couldn't leave us without one last laugh.
We owe so much to you, Kuya Ding. You live on in the struggle for genuine liberation and just peace through us and the masses who loved you dearly.
#DingPangkaraniwan
———
Vince Francis "Poy" Dingding was martyred in an alleged encounter alongside 4 other Red fighters on May 16 in Cauayan, Negros Occidental.
I thought I had processed all my grief when I wrote “Left Turn,” the personal essay written partially as a tribute to slain journalist RJ Ledesma, my colleague in alternative media and one of the victims of the Negros 19 massacre, and partially as a reflection of the contradictions I face as a disabled activist.
But after it was published on Bulatlat.com, a friend of mine reached out to me to thank me for the piece. I had met her during a creative writing workshop in Cebu in 2018. We had both submitted creative non-fiction pieces then and we have been in similar literary circles ever since.
And she also knew RJ, who had been a brilliant and powerful poet. She’d met him at a workshop in 2025.
RJ’s poetry has been circulating online since he died, making his death felt everywhere, reaching even those furthest from him. I, myself, had only found out about them after his death, having had only a vague idea of who he was outside of being an alternative media journalist.
We were both in human rights reporting and also wrote for cause-oriented organizations so I knew the kind of mental load we must have both carried at the same time, albeit in different regions. A weight that came from constantly writing about the dead bodies of people we knew.
Ten years into this work and I am paralyzed from creative writing."Left Turn” was the first essay I’d written in nearly a decade that I didn’t hate as much. I was just so inundated with the sheer evil of the fascist state, particularly the mercenary military that took RJ's life, that it was often difficult to bring something new to the table. It was much easier to turn on autopilot because the work does not end with just breaking the news of a massacre but continues on in the long pursuit for justice. Even if I did write, it was often limited to Facebook posts and tweets. This paralysis was compounded more by years of depression.
So I marveled to my friend that RJ was so amazing to have not only overcome the effects of the heart-wrenching work but also take inspiration from it. His poetry is melancholic and angry, powerful and agitating, soft and fierce, an homage to a life spent pursuing genuine liveration and just peace. His poetry speaks to every activist who has had to keep moving int the face of fascism, to keep fighting while looking down the barrel of a gun.
I told my friend about my paralysis, how I could not create something I was proud of for a long time because I focused my energy on the work. I don’t regret it, but as someone who was more or less in the same position as RJ, doing the same kind of work... he had a different kind of strength.
Then my friend told me about how this was the exact thing he had talked about in that workshop last year, how he worried that he would not be able to create because of the work that we do.
I cried again when I learned of that. I really do wish that I had met him.
Our lives were so similar, running so indisputably parallel to each other that they also never intersected.
---
I explore all this and more in "Left Turn," which you can read by clicking this link: Left Turn.
from the journal (apr. 22, 2026): tolerance of the body, resilience of the mind
forced myself to have a long day today (and yesterday) so i can figure out my body's tolerance for when i go back to work. verdict: weak bitch
1. yesterday: 2-hr meeting/gtky with bayan bc, mental load, generally try not to go out on consecutive days. not recommended for deaf-blind lupus patients 0/10
2. today: dropped off anri at school. 8 min walk, 20 min bus ride
3. walking around the area of anri's school, ate at street hawker kay wala nag lunch so nakagasto napud
4. short grocery run
5. bus back
6. wasn't able to nap, had to call my comrade and friend who broke down crying about the toboso 19.
7. so ended up going to weekly wednesday trivia lacking a much needed nap (no regrets, happy to be there for them)
8. trivia ended up starting at 8 instead of the usual 7 and was not at our usual bar, which is 15 mins away from me. this new-not-new bar is 30 mins away
9. didn't win and the bar was a little too loud because it's spring and people are coming out of hibernation
10. by round 4 of 4 i ran out of steam and was zoning out a lot. wanted to sleep
11. i was already tired but i forced myself to go out because i still tear up every time i think about RJ. fuck the AFP, fuck the US-Marcos regime. mga satanas
12. home now, 11pm writing this. tired. didn't get onion rings too. can barely think. still grieving. like my friend said, "why is it always the best people?" but the simple answer is just that they wouldn't find themselves in places where the marginalized experience injustice as the norm—where they are needed the most—if they weren't good people. our comrades are the best people.
i didn't read your reply to my last message because it hurts that that was the only time you thought i was worth the conversation about it lol like now that i was the one setting a boundary, it's suddenly okay to talk about it when you spent almost a year stringing me along
i'm not interested in second guessing my place in someone's life anymore, especially yours. you were my touchstone, but you very clearly didn't want to fix anything. couldn't even tell me what i did and it only showed me how much you actually valued me. was i supposed to read your mind? it's been so strange having people ask me why we're fighting and all i could say was that i didn't actually know and maybe they should ask you about it. i hope someone does ask you about it, so they'll have the clarity i clearly wasn't worth giving
i've always known that when i love, i love hard. like almost all or nothing. i'm zero or 100. and i'm really struggling to accept that i'm like this because it's just caused me a lot of great pain. because i don't love halfway.
and i wonder if maybe that's what i need to do? accept that this is the kind of person i am, someone who will always care and love at full brightness? like maybe i should stop trying to go against my nature just because i don't want to get hurt or rejected.
if self-love is also having self-compassion, maybe i should stop punishing myself for being myself. to be able to love myself, i need to start accepting all my parts and not resent them. i will get hurt either way and i will always feel my sadness with my whole body, but i don't have to hate it. maybe just deal with it. accept it and work around it during the times that it becomes detrimental behavior.
i hope i know how to start. i'm always gonna be someone who will love at full brightness, who will care at full volume. there's no turning any of these down.'
This song is always a reminder of the beautiful world we're fighting for and every time I listen to it, I always feel a surge of "kadasig," the kind that has allowed and will continue to allow me to keep fighting for just and lasting peace for the rest of my life, no matter how demoralized ,I get or how uphill the battle feels, through illness and disability and grief and depression and everything in the world that seems insurmountable.
"Narinig ko na noon pa man ang kay tapat na pangako na sa ating lakas may paglayang wagas, pangako pangako pangako..." (from Isang Minutong Katahimikan)
"I have spirit enough for another thousand years or more..." (Felix Dzerzhinsky)
I don't think I will ever have the words to describe how lonely and isolating it's been to be receiving all of this news about the world all on my own for the last more than two years and having no one to process it with. I miss being in the office commiserating with comrades and friends about yet another act of imperialist aggression. I miss organizing the protests that condemn them. I miss being around people who get it. I miss Cebu, most of all.
A lot of factors go into this: disconnection from people, blindness making it impossible for me to travel anywhere on my own and bloating the distance I already feel, and generally not actively organizing on-ground.
And—this is going to sound dramatic—it even stings a bit only being able to read statements and not write them. Even though I'm still writing to the best of my ability, I'm significantly slowed down by having to use a screen reader and Braille, so much so that I'm unable to fight the propaganda war with the speed I used to had. And in a system where the enemy has all the resources possible, being able to put the fascist propaganda machine on the defensive through the written word means so much more than most people realize. There's impact in turning the tables even for a little while.
But my reality right now is that there's only so much I can do in the face of blindness and muscle loss. I can't even do a whole shower routine without having to rest for a period afterwards because standing in the shower by itself already takes so much effort.
And it goes beyond the physical, too. The mental and emotional anguish of still being mildly in denial about my blindness, feeling like a burden to everyone, and worrying about being so tired all the time that I slow people down even if I do try to return to organizational work. Having to grapple with people unintentionally reducing me as nothing more than my disability and hiding it behind the language of care. Having no direction. Life not happening. Loss, in all its forms.
I know I should take the time to rest and recover so I can build up the strength to struggle for national democracy and pursue just and lasting peace again with the broad masses of the Filipino people. I can do more healing than I can grieving.
But sometimes my strength fails me and I can only ask for time and the chance to try again.
———
Photo: November 2018. Me at the CEGP Cebu-led protest commemorating the Ampatuan massacre and calling for justice for the 58 individuals killed, including 32 journalists
Loneliness can come in two types: social loneliness and emotional loneliness. The first is the more obvious one: you're alone. The second is more insidious because it's hard to pinpoint. It's when no one you love requires care from you, when nobody goes to you for help or support... when you're nobody's somebody.
I learned about these two from—as I learn almost all things now—a video I found online. The creator had described herself as "being good at loneliness" and she explained the two. She also admitted that there wasn't really any real way to stop hurting from the second type, from the loneliness that comes as a result of not being needed.
I'm good at loneliness, but it never occurred to me before that the bottomless pit in the stomach that cannot be filled continues to expand because nobody needs you to care for them. You can't fill the pit with the joy and honor of being there for somebody. I thought loneliness only came in the form of not being invited to somebody's birthday party or when you've convinced yourself that no, you're not lonely, you just like being alone.
I wrote in an old blog post that I didn't mind being alone, that I was used to doing things on my own. The only real reasons that I even have friends are partly because I, an introvert, was adopted by extroverts, who seemed to like me, and partly because I was thrust into positions of leadership from a very young age, so I held something called expert power in many situations. It was easier to make friends in school when you had the trust and respect that came with a title, no matter how bad you actually are at making friends. I was someone who knew things and, for that alone, I had value.
But the unfortunate adverse effect of this is that you neglect to create value that is much more inherent and so when something life-altering occurs and you lose everything, the dynamics shift irrevocably.
I went blind two years ago as a result of a nearly fatal case of fungal meningitis. I also became partially deaf and lost a lot of muscle, so I had to learn to walk again. And, as a lupus patient, the autoimmune illness also swung precariously between life and death. This meant that I had to give up everything — my job, my life, everything that I was. and I simply became my disability.
Even with the prospect of one day recovering my eyesight, it's impossible to avoid the oppressive pain of having to mold my life around these new disabilities. I spent my whole life avoiding that exact thing and now I cannot be seen as anything else. I've had lupus since I was 14 so I've always been disabled, but to the people around me, this is the first time that my disability is visible. This minute change in perception has shifted the foundation of my life dramatically.
as a result of what happened to me—almost dying and recovering and then relapsing and having to get brain surgery—the people I love hesitate to approach me for anything. It comes from a place of love, from a place of respect for my recovery and as a way for them to help me focus on it. They're just as lost as I am. There is no manual or guidebook for any of this, so all they can do is try, just as I do.
but recovery is long, very long, and life doesn't stop just because mine has stagnated.
So now I feel the deepest sense of loneliness from not being able to take care of the ones I love. This even applies in the physical sense as I am too weak to help anyone get up on their feet. I feel a very strong sense of grief from not being able to help, from not being trusted enough to help.
"If you ever need to unburden yourself of anything – anything at all – I am willing to listen. I am here to listen." Is something I've said multiple times throughout this year, because if nothing else, at least I will be able to reassure my friends of my presence.
but I am not anyone's go-to person. I haven't been anyone's anyone for a long time.
I really understand the sentiment, the hesitation, the space they want to give me. I would probably do the same if I were in their shoes. I already have a hard enough time asking for help as I am, how much more if I had to ask for help from a friend who was clearly struggling?
I sometimes wish I wasn't the kind of person who needs to take care of somebody else in order to feel secure. I wish that I could find stability all on my own. I wish that I could love myself enough to feel fulfilled from caring for myself.
but this is not my reality. That's not the kind of person I am.
I don't have solutions for anyone who is going through the same thing. This post doesn't have a happy ending. But if I was given the chance to communicate this loneliness to the people I love without the fear of misunderstanding, I would say:
I hope you will one day allow me to care for you again even in small ways. I hope, one day, you will feel safe enough with me to lean on me and trust that there is no judgment here, only understanding. My limitations don't bar me from empathy and kindness. My disability doesn't take from my love for you.
I hope I can be somebody for you again, even for just a day.
hi all. currently not posting on here because tumblr still hasn't reinstated the edit post button. you can read my newer stuff on Medium: medium medium.com/@clrmmo
She Was Courage, Strength, and Commitment: A Tribute to Trans Woman Revolutionary Dee "Ka Dahlia" Supelanas
My last memory of Dee was when she agreed to emcee for the journalism workshop of alternative media organization Aninaw Productions. I was the head editor then and organizing the workshop was challenging as this had been in 2021 and travel was still restricted due to COVID—not to mention my own limitations as a lupus patient—so the whole 3-part workshop had to be held online.
This was a very stressful time for me as I was approaching the final exams for the first semester of my master's degree, alongside continuing my organizing and journalism work virtually.
But Dee had a way about her, an aura that just put you at ease. So when she agreed to the task—and even assisted beyond that—I knew we would be alright.
Dee had a soft nature at first look, but once you got to know the firm student leader, you couldn't ever question the authority in her voice, her sharp analyses, and the way she held herself. Her conviction in her willingness to learn and improve in her work as an activist and organizer could not be denied.
Dee was a year younger than me and a fellow student at UP Cebu. She was part of the first batch of freshmen who underwent the K-12 program and had only entered college as my batch started our senior year. With three years between us, UP Cebu's population was smaller than it had been. This presented a challenge with organizing, but Dee and her fellow student leaders at that time held strong and persevered because they knew victories aren't won overnight. From the beginning, Dee had always showed dedication to serving the student population and other sectors outside the university.
I'd worked with her in multiple campaigns. There were many nights spent poring over the best ways to get things moving. We worked together during the 2019 Lumad Bakwit School, supporting the Lumad indigenous groups as they evacuated (bakwit) from the rampant militarization and bombing of their homes and schools. State forces are constantly making way for multinational corporations to steal from the resource-rich ancestral lands. The Lumad launched the Bakwit School as both an effort to continue Lumad children's education amid the horrors of imperialist plunder and as their way to show their resistance against militarization. While I was the person working behind the scenes, Dee was one of the representatives from the youth sector leading the charge as we marched alongside the Lumad people. We were there, too, when the police raided the Lumad Bakwit School in 2021 and Lumad volunteer teachers, Lumad leaders and students alike were unjustly arrested. We fought hard to ensure the safety of the Lumad children, who were being paraded around in the media by the police like trophies for their "successful" operation.
We also worked on several other campaigns together across multiple sectors, including human rights, education, labor, and LGBT rights campaigns. Part and parcel of our work as activists is the exposure to how the rotten system continuously fails and oppresses the marginalized. Dee bore witness to the struggles of farming and peasant communities in Negros Oriental when she joined the fact-finding mission that human rights organizations led into Oplan Sauron where 14 farmers were almost simultaneously killed across the island by combined military and police forces, for simply being under the mere suspicion that they were armed rebels. She saw how the education sector struggled—teachers, students, and support staff alike—as a student leader. She supported unions and workers' associations, and fought alongside fellow advocates for gender equality, an advocacy close to her heart as Dee herself was a trans woman.
As a victim of red-tagging and death threats herself, Dee saw how state forces consisently showed absolutely no respect for the rule of law and how a broken justice system enabled this.She was also familiar with the maneuvers of corporations and the ruling elite who back them to purposely raze urban poor communities to the ground to make way for greed disguised as development. Dee understood that this "development" was paid for by the displacement of the working class, most earning less than minimum wage and struggling with job insecurity.
Dee sat, spoke, ate, marched, and fought alongside the marginalized, the exploited, and the oppressed. Here, she learned the might of collective action and the power of revolutionary fervor so strong, those in power could not help but bend to it. Dee saw that the basic masses, even with everything up against them and everything to lose, still continued to fight people and institutions more powerful than them because it was just and necessary. Dee did not come to the decision to join the armed revolutionary movement lightly. I hadn't been able to see her in years, but this much I know is true. She chose to die serving the people, in the way she believed was most effective. She could no longer stand by and watch as our government stole from, tricked, and killed us. A drastic change was needed.
Dee was one of our best and brightest and, most importantly, kindest. It wasn't the type of kindness that folded in on itself, but one that reached out and touched people, one that didn't limit itself. She was fierce and gentle all at the same time. She was scary at times, but was also the first to laugh unapologetically at the bad jokes and the first to offer a genuine smile. She was courage, strength, and commitment.
At 26 years old,Dee was killed along with 6 other Red fighters on April 27, 2025 in a rural area in Cabancalan City, Negros Occidental.'
I wish I could tell you all about the vibrant life she led until the day she died, but no online space can truly contain all that Dee was and has ever been.
I love and miss you, Dee. I wish I could have seen you one last time. Rest in power, Ka Dahlia! ✊🏼
———
Dee, I wish I could have given you a better tribute more fitting of the wonderful and fierce woman that you were, but my blindness is in the way. I just know you would say, "Okay ra te uyyyy" if you heard me right now. You always had a way of keeping us in line. I miss your wisdom dearly.
These days, I've been imagining how our paths would cross again. I don't care for you anymore, but something about almost dying really makes a girl think.
Maybe we would see each other at a marathon or a hike, if I ever end up in any of your sports,either as an athlete myself—yeah, I know it's funny to imagine until I'm able to actually do it—or as some kind of volunteer manning the booth—the more likely outcome.
Or perhaps a' literary event or a book club meeting because you finally got off your ass and actually started attending bookish gatherings. You're a big reader and yet talking books with other people is the one muscle you don't exercise.
what if it'll be at a concert of a local band, because you finally decided to explore Cebuano music? Or maybe it'll be at some bar with Frank Ocean's "Pink + White" playing in low tones from somewhere.
And I wonder what I would say to you. maybe I'd give you a "how are you?" and a smile, just to be polite. Maybe I'd ignore you entirely, but we both know that's not my way. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to ghost me 9 times, turning up once every month, disappearing, and then coming back the next month. On repeat. It was a situation that was only possible if one of us was being manipulative and the other dumb and fragile. Guess which one I was.
Perhaps you'd be civil about it and not ignore me for once, unlike all those other times. The tines you refused to meet up with me because you "weren't here to catch feelings" and then later implying you already did. "You know how I feel about you," you'd said.
Or that time you erased our history after I tried to reach out to you when I was discharged from the hospital. You said you didn't have an account on that website at all.
Maybe you'd take me to a coffee place you like, coffee snob that you are. I'd tell you all about my time in the hospital, as I'm sure you heard about from the online page my friends set up for me. Cebu isn't that big, even if you're only here for work.
I'd tell you about how I lived in an alternate reality in my mind while I was in a comatose-like state in the ICU battling meningitis. For 28 days, my mind brought me on an adventure with you, traveling across the world with my nurse and my cousin trying to find a hospital that would treat me despite my "criminal record." Because you had framed me for a bombing that you planned and executed' yourself.
Yeah, I don't know why either, but hey, it's fucking funny.
It'll be fine at first, this reunion. Like old friends reconnecting.
But then the weight in my stomach will start to pull me down". We'll start talking about those two weeks in January 2023 when we listened to music together through Spotify Jam. That time when you created an entirely new account and paid for premium just to ensure I didn't find out who you were.
I was in a different timezone so it was always nighttime for me, which was good because, as soon as the clock hit 5pm, you'd be out of the office and out of my life again, only to come back at 8 in the morning.
I knew you were stringing me along, but it was a hard year, just months after I left my 5-year relationship. I'd never felt more seen than when someone was being inconsistent with me. Mistreatment was familiar. So I kept replying to you each time you came back.
You should be proud that I found the strength to end it. Last time we spoke, I had already been in the hospital, misdiagnosed with a nasty headache. I was the one who deleted our message thread this time around. Wasn't that what you were waiting for? You must've yelled out "finally!" to the heavens that day.
I still listen to the playlists, by the way. I don't think of you when I listen to them, at least not in that way. I love music and not even you could sour that feeling.
You titled one of the playlists "songs claire will never listen to" and now you remember why the title of this post is familiar.',
Joke's on you, I like that playlist.
If I ever get to finally meet you in person, perhaps I will pretend not to know you. It's not so far from the truth.
(Originally published on January 24, 2025 on social media. I was too sad to care about finesse in the writing so there are parts that could've been written better.)
Today, January 24, marks one year since my brain surgery. They had to insert a tube called a VP shunt from a ventricle in my brain to the peritonium in the abdomen because the excess cerebrospinal fluid was no longer draining on its own.
The meningitis had relapsed a month prior just as we were heading back to my parents' hometown in Ormoc. We elected not to share this publicly because it was too upsetting.
But I am well now. Mostly. I'm constantly paranoid that every headache I have might be the meningitis relapsing. So that's fun.
I've been doing mostly well this past 1 year and 5 months since the ICU, just doing my best to occupy myself with interesting things and making myself laugh as the world goes by around me.
But the despair is finally catching up to me. Lately, I've been grieving the life I lost, the weight of every "what if" making me feel laden most days. I knew it would feel like an uphill battle, but knowing and experiencing are different things.
I've run out of inspirational lines for this one. I hope my grief is not too unsightly. I'm still soldiering on because I have to. Just for today, I want "because I have to" to be a good enough reason as any to move forward. I want it to not always be something grandiose or glorious or inspiring.
Just for today, I want to be strong only for myself.
***
First photo: February 3, 2024, two days after discharge, with Meg Lim. I still have staples wedged into my scalp in this photo.
Outside of my check ups and hospitalizations, today, December 8, is the first time in over a year that I've willingly gone out of the house.
My relatives have been trying to convince me to go out for months, even just to visit our other relatives. But I refused every time because it was depressing to imagine myself at a beach or some other beautiful place in Ormoc and not be able to see or smell it . I would not even be able to smell the ocean breeze. I would just be haunted by having something so near yet so out of reach.
But I decided to come out for Nico's birthday because, if nothing else, I should at least show up for my nephew.
I've been here before. Recovery can be treacherous, burdening you with the knowledge that yes, you're alive, but you're not living. You miss everyone's birthdays, every gathering, every art and music event, every protest march.
But somehow, after every near-death experience, I still always find myself almost instinctively holding on to life, to faith in my own mental strength, to a "fall seven times, stand up eight "attitude, like it's just the next logical step in the process. It might be the problem solver in me But perhaps it's also all the art and music that I've absorbed over the years.
Even as a teenager, I've always gravitated towards art that portray the indomitable human spirit. Songs like Take Your Time Coming Home by fun., Ruby by Foster the People, Swim by Jack's Mannequin, and Unsinkable Ships by Meg and Dia. Books like Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly and City of Thieves by David Benioff, a book that remains my all-time favorite to this day.
And when I was organized into the mass movement, I learned to take strength from Marxist philosophy, particularly dialectical materialism, and from the different people in different marginalized communities that I've had the chance to work with and fight alongside.
I take strength from the knowledge that there is no greater endeavor than the struggle for genuine liberation, and, as unusual as it may sound, this has been instrumental in helping me accept my auto immune illness.(I swear I will write an essay about this soon.)
And I take the most strength from the fulfillment I feel with my relationships, my social support, my communities. It is a beautiful and wondrous thing to recognize how much our lives are intertwined with each other. I've realized recently that so much of the way I appreciate art and music is shaped by the people who enjoyed these pieces of media with me, sharing in the joy of it. I think, amid the hustle of life, it is easy to forget how much this togetherness seeps into our subconscious and informs our way of life.
I recently decided to get over my fear of reading books with disabled protagonists, but I found a happy medium in romance novels because one thing that a romance novel will guarantee is a happy or optimistic ending.
In one of these books, the female protagonist has autism and rheumatoid arthritis, which is coincidentally the same one I have, and she has a conversation with the male protagonist's father, who had to get a prosthetic leg because of a bad injury.
She asks him, "How are you?" and he responds with, "always healing."
This gave me much needed perspective because the bitter truth is that I would not have contracted that specific kind of meningitis, lost 3 of my senses including sight, and had to learn to walk again if I did not have lupus.
But instead of thinking, "I will never stop being angry about the lupus, "I will now make the effort to recognize that I am always healing.
Some days will be worse than others. But I can rest easy in my own tenacity for life, in my revolutionary optimism to Help build a world where peace is based on justice, My faith in the people who love and care for me, and the knowledge and certainty that I still have more tomorrows, that each sunrise is a chance to struggle bravely, proudly, and tenaciously.
As we await the results of the 2024 Philippine Bar Exams, I want to tell you all about a friend, comrade, and lawyer-revolutionary Hannah "Ka Maya" Cesista. She had passed the 2022 Bar Exams but didn't take oath and chose to serve the masses in the countrysides instead.
In anticipation of the 2024 bar exam results, I want to tell you all about a lawyer-revolutionary comrade, and friend Hannah Cesista.
I met Ate Hannah when we were students at UP Cebu. She was in the year above me as a political science major. Ours is a very small campus and we were both in the College of Social Sciences. Our classrooms really only occupied two floors of the already-small AS building. So I always saw her around, and every time I did, she always had a bright smile for me and I always felt that she was happy to see me, even if it was just in the hallways. It was a good marker of the genuine kindness that she carried with her. She had an aura that drew people in—open, kind, and believing in the good of humanity.
With this mindset, she became one of the most tenacious organizers in the human rights sector. Her quiet tenacity made her instrumental in establishing the NUPL Law Students arm in Cebu while she was a law student at the University of San Carlos.
She was also a dedicated paralegal and human rights worker of Karapatan-Central Visayas. She always found herself in urban poor communities, often providing paralegal training or just simply joining community members in such discussions. You could find her among the workers during strikes and campouts even during the most dangerous times of a labor case. You could also find her working and assisting with cases involving our fellow activists being unjustly persecuted by the state, human rights workers like herself being charged with false charges. She did this while battling the crazy schedule of a law student.
I remember a time when we had organized a protest at Colon Street. I was surprised to see her there because I knew that law school classes usually started at 5 or 6 PM and the protest was scheduled for 5 PM. I would later find out that her class was at 6 PM that day, and still, she took the time to show up because she knew the importance of registering our dissent against the fascist Duterte regime.
More than that, she was always among the people in the communities, those forgotten by the law and cheated by the justice system. She spent a lot of time learning their stories and listening to them and fighting alongside them, recognizing that our justice system has never served the marginalized. In fact, it has only served to further push them into the margins.
She had seen urban poor communities scramble to rebuild their lives and their houses after an illegal demolition that displaced them. She had witnessed how workers were exploited in their place of work—forced to work 12 to 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, for more than 10 years—without ever being regularized. She had seen how brutally the state silences dissenters and activists for exposing state neglect disguised as mere incompetence.
These experiences, combined with her efforts to pursue legal reforms for the masses she deeply cared about, ultimately shaped her decision to pursue the highest form of struggle. It's not hard to imagine that, as somebody who knew the law, she felt that it was not enough for the change we need to dismantle an oppressive system.
And what better way to put her law degree into practice than to go where Filipinos don't have access to electricity, let alone legal recourse? Where injustice is the norm and the sight of the military harassing farmers is a daily occurrence? Where the Geneva convention and the international humanitarian law are merely scraps of paper because of all the human rights violations committed by state forces? Where ordinary citizens are constantly fighting for their lives against a lack of basic social services? Where the most far-flung communities have never had access to schools, and sometimes even water?
She went where she was needed the most.
I had worked with her for many years from when she was organized as a college student to when she became a law student. I often wrote for Karapatan in the region and she was in charge of reaching media organizations, trying to get word out about human rights violations. We spent many hours in our Messenger chat talking about the best ways to represent the struggles of the marginalized in the written word. We were writing constantly, and whenever she would be too busy because of law school, she would reach out to me for assistance and I would do the same whenever I needed help.
She was the bravest of us. Frankly, the best lawyer I know.
She had passed her bar exams in 2022 but didn't take oath and chose to serve the masses in the countrysides instead. This year, as we welcome a new batch of lawyers, it is my hope that they may be encouraged to follow in her footsteps, to find themselves among the marginalized sectors of society, to sit with the people, learn their lives under this exploitative system, to recognize that injustice is their everyday reality. And to one day struggle alongside them, to fight for genuine liberation.
She was killed in an alleged encounter on February 23, 2024 in Bilar, Bohol along with 4 others. There are eyewitness accounts that the Bilar 5 had surrendered to the military but had undergone torture instead and were eventually killed.
It is all the more reason why we must pursue the resumption of the peace talks between the Philippine government and the CPP-NPA-NDF in order to address the roots of armed conflict, such as landlessness and the rampant militarization of the countrysides, and for both parties to agree on a resolution where peace is based on justice. The government must recognize that it is the state's refusal to address the lack of basic social services and its brutal repression of its citizens that push farmers, workers, journalists, artists, and lawyers alike to lose faith in the legal system and choose to take up arms instead. Having to constantly face the barrel of a gun whenever the people have legitimate demands like wage increase and agrarian reform makes democracy merely fictional in this country.
I miss and grieve you always, Ate Hannah. It never gets easier to lose comrades no matter where they are in the country and the world but even more painful to lose someone who was also a friend.
To quote another comrade, I will grieve for the rest of my life. Rest in power, Ka Maya ✊🏼
***
I had a photo of her from November 2019. We were volunteers assisting the AMA Sugbo-KMU General Assembly. It was a beautiful photo and I looked everywhere. I had initially thought that I sent it to her in our chat But I couldn't find it there. I remember her face in that photo so clearly, smiling brightly at the camera. It was my only photo of her.
(thank you to my friends Astrid and Michelle, who write an edit for a living, for editing this for me. Writing as a blind person means that I have had to learn to rely on the kindness of my friends to create something good.)
This was originally a Facebook post that I posted on October 18, 2024. I wanted to post this here as well on the off chance that someone is keeping up with this blog. My friend Astrid checked this over for me because I'm only using dictation, and it creates a lot of punctuation and grammatical errors. Anyway, here's the link to the Facebook post:
Hi. I know I've been quiet for more than a year now, but I wanted to come back to say thank you and to maybe update you all about how I've b
Hi. I know I've been quiet for more than a year now, but I wanted to come back to say thank you and to maybe update you all about how I've been doing post meningitis. I wish I could tell you all the full story right now. But I am still blind, and right now, I am relying on the dictation function of the keyboard and Braille. I promise I will definitely tell this story as soon as I can, and I promise it will be a full five-page essay 😀
In case some of you didn't know, I contracted cryptococcal meningitis last year, which caused me to lose my eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell, and I had to learn to walk again. That's just the tip of the iceberg because I was in the ICU for almost a month and then had to stay in the hospital for another month. And a lot of things happened in between.
I got to rest at home for around two months before I relapsed in December, and the meningitis came back with a vengeance - so much so that I ended up having to get a VP shunt surgery. Now I have a tube that goes from a ventricle in my brain to drain excess cerebral spinal fluid into the peritoneum in my abdomen. I have a valve and everything. I tell my friends I am a robot now. 🤖
That's a total of 59 lumbar punctures, and I was awake for 42 of them. I had 21 while I was in the ICU and 38 almost every single day during my relapse. I am not a fan of it ☹️
I was released from the hospital on February 1, 2024, and since then, I've just been doing my best to look for ways to entertain myself while I am unable to work, unable to truly write, and unable to live my life the way I want to. But it hasn't been all bad. I decided to get an audible subscription so I could listen to audiobooks, and now my most active social media is Goodreads. I figured out a way to use the built-in iPhone screen reader to the fullest, though many apps are not compatible with it, especially META apps. Honestly, the app with the best accessibility is Twitter/X.
I've kept in contact with most of my friends and family. I've made it a point to do so because having a near death experience really makes you realize some things. Life is much too precarious to spend it not building or rebuilding bridges with people you've created distances with, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Besides, what is the point of all these advances in technology if we don't use them to maintain our communities?
I have mostly been spending time on a private Instagram account with a few of my friends as followers. I post a lot of Instagram stories just talking about literally anything that comes to mind. I'm also learning how to navigate the app even with a screen reader, and I've managed to do a lot of things that I used to do before I went blind, which I think makes me super awesome 😀 But seriously, I've been learning to post videos and photos on the account, and my friends are gracious enough to humor me with likes.
I’ve even learned to edit videos. Well, “edit” is an overstatement, but I did manage to stitch two clips together using CapCut, which was a struggle because CapCut is not good with a screen reader. I’ve even learned to put text on photos, and I've made just one meme so far of my nephew Anri. Videos of him and my other nephew, Oliver, are what make up the bulk of this Instagram account.
One day, when I am able to see again, I will review these videos in full color, hopefully. Right now, only my right eye can “see” shadows and light, but it is improving. Even though I can only see in black-and-white, I’m now able to recognize my nephews’ features on the camera during video calls.
I've also learned to brush my own teeth, take my own medicine, fold my own blanket, and sometimes plug in my own phone charger with some safety precautions. I can even take a bath by myself under the watchful eye of my mother, just in case I slip and fall. I can eat on my own now, though I do have to use my hands. My parents would do anything for me, of course, but I wanted to unburden them from these little tasks I have to do to be a functional human being. So I learned and learned and learned and learned.
I was prompted to finally write this post because this week, I was able to write 3000 words of a short story. It's a very bad first draft with a lot of punctuation and grammatical errors, but it's 3000 WORDS almost fully using dictation. I had to use the built-in iPhone Braille keyboard whenever I erased words. A few months ago, I taught myself to learn Braille using the iPhone braille keyboard. It's actually an excellent piece of technology and it works best with Apple apps. But you do need some form of hearing to use it because the phone reads out the letter you’re typing. I'm not as fast as other braille users but I think I'm getting there.
Writing a short story felt like such an achievement that I want to tell literally everyone about it 😀 And I will be riding this wave for a long time. Life is a little different when you have to live in literal darkness and just watch your life and the world go by without you. I don't want to be just a spectator in this world, I want to be a participant, but I know that in order to do that, I have to rest well, take care of my body, take care of my relationships, and just wait for the right time.
I've had to struggle a lot with the fact that everyone my age, all my friends, are moving forward with their lives, while I've been set back. I still struggle with it sometimes, having to watch them and feel envy. But mostly, I feel very, very proud of all of them. I don't even have the time to feel envious anymore whenever I remember all the things they've overcome to get to where they are. I try my best not to feel pressured and accept that this is just the hand I've been dealt with in life and I just have to keep playing.
I have to watch my nephews grow up without me, hopefully just for now, and I miss them and my siblings terribly. So I am doing my best to be good to myself so I can see them again much sooner than expected.
I am staying sane with books, music, video calls with friends and family, voice messages, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts, even though I have to sometimes ask my friends to explain them to me. I also spend quite a lot of time singing at home, bothering the birds and the ants and the neighbors with it. I’ve also learned to rap the Chance the Rapper parts in the song Sunday Candy. (Please support my new career as Claire the Rapper.)
Mostly, I spend a lot of time doing my best to be grateful. I’m grateful for my family, who kept the faith that I would always come home to them even during those days when some doctors thought I wouldn't make it and that even if I did, my mind would regress into that of a child. But I didn't. I suppose my most consistent hobby is defying my odds 😀
I'm also so very grateful for everyone who helped out. My relatives here and abroad, my friends and comrades, organizations I am a member of, those I've interacted with, my blood donors, all the artist and writers who shared their talents to help in the fundraising, All my classmates from high school and college; all the doctors and nurses who took care of me in the hospitals; all the priests, nuns, and religious groups who prayed for me; and everyone who has prayed for me or donated or gave even just a single passing thought about my well-being. There is no way to measure my gratitude for all of you, and as soon as I get better, I will do my best to thank each of you for everything you've done for me and my family.
There was a time when I was under a comatose-like state in the ICU where my brain gave me a different reality: I was lying down on a circular bed with white bedsheets that was going around in an elliptical. From above, there was a cliff on the left side and the entrance to a hotel lobby on the right side, and I would pass by these two with every rotation . This was around the time I had become unresponsive in the hospital. I was under a lot of stress, worrying about the fact that this was a problem I couldn't solve. At some point, I heard my sister's voice, and she appeared looking unearthly, beautiful. Looking back, I now realize that that wasn't really my sister because she doesn't remember saying, "Hi Kay. Ganina ra ko nangita nimo." I think that I was at some kind of pre-afterlife point and that entity was perhaps an angel trying to comfort me. I'm usually a skeptic, but after my mind created an entirely different reality for me while I was in the ICU to shield me from most of the pain, I think I am a believer of the wonders of the human brain now. Well, I suppose I always was, being a psychology major and all. But this felt a little more supernatural.
I know now that I was given a choice between life and death, and I chose life and survived death. Things are hard financially right now because of all the hospital bills and my continued treatment for lupus and CKD, but you know what? I'm alive right now. I beat meningitis, despite my odds, and despite the difficulty in treatment because of the lupus.
When I get better, I don't want to be just the unsinkable ship that floats listlessly in the ocean. I want to be the sails that steer the ship toward the sunrise, even against huge waves and storms. I won't just be unsinkable. I want to be unbreakable.
I'm going to need that unbreakable spirit for all that I want to do in life. Be the best Auntie Kakay to my nephews, for one. Continue my work in the struggle for genuine liberation. Fight, always fight. Learn first aid, sign language, and how to throw a punch. I might even go on and learn how to sing, just to annoy everyone. I might publish a book or four or zero. Maybe go back to writing poetry. Perhaps I could finish my masters in clinical psychology or maybe not. Bake a lot more pastries, and finally conquer baking bread and macarons and baked goods I find difficult because I have an irrational fear of yeast and egg whites. Learn to cook every single dish I want, especially now that food is not so restricted. But mostly, I'm going to build and rebuild a life for myself, against all odds.
Meningitis ra ka, si Claire Obejas ko. 😭 ✊🏼
***
This photo is from my 26th birthday last August. A big improvement because I spent my birthday in the ICU last year. Yes, I miss my long hair 😔
Also, if any of you want recommendations for audio, dramas, romance, science fiction, historical fiction, nonfiction, some speculative fiction, and fantasy, I am your girl. (Wait, maybe not. That's way too much pressure 😔 but if you want to know anyway and won't get mad at me if it's bad, I can be contacted through voice messages, but also I am mostly fluent in Siri Bisaya now. And if you have books you want to recommend and you have the EPUB file, I am happy to receive 😀)
I often imagine myself telling my nephews and nieces stories of my relationships from when I was younger (assuming that, by this time, I will be something like 50 years old). Not in the joking way that my parents often do—”ex mani nimo diba? Di uy, wa intawn koy lain uyab nga di ikaw”—but in a gentle and sincere retelling of all the people I used to love.
Of course, this is a fantasy because I’m not sure my nephews and nieces would be interested. My nephew Anri is eight months old this month, and I can’t imagine this tiny guy being regaled with tales of Auntie Kakay’s failed attempts at love. Maybe when he needs advice, but I doubt I’ll be helpful anyhow.
Well, regardless, I think about it often. I remember being so surprised that this, apparently, isn’t a tactic unique to me when I saw Princess Carolyn do the same with her great-great-great-granddaughter in the “Ruthie” episode.
I’ve gotten good at telling these stories. My mind requires organization to understand something, so every time I meet someone, and it inevitably ends for one reason or another, I have to think up a one-liner to describe the whole thing. It also makes for easier retelling when I go to see friends, and they ask, “What happened to ___?”
Since breaking up with my ex of five and a half years last August, I had tried to “meet” people. I wasn’t at all planning to, but this was an impulse decision after I found out my ex already had someone new four months after the breakup. It hurt me so bad I had to find someone to make new connections with, however shallow. I wasn’t looking to start a relationship with anyone, but I wanted to have somehow meaningful interactions. I wasn’t looking for love, but I wanted the reminder that I could be loved, even if none of that actually came to fruition.
In the process of trying to get over my ex, I got my heart broken twice, so now I have to learn to get over all three of these people at the same time. I won't talk about it in detail, but I believe a big part of each failed attempt is my fault. Could be my emotionality or a misunderstanding of the fundamentals of what constitutes these kinds of relationships or a general misconception of what I wanted in the first place. I’m very good at telling stories, and I guess that matches up with being very good at making bad decisions. Character development for the plot, or something.
But they weren’t terrible people. This was my first attempt at trying for casual relationships after years of only being in serious relationships, and I have had the great luck that I did not meet downright evil individuals who were looking to take advantage of me in the worst ways.
Despite this relatively okay first experience, I don’t think I will try again.
All this has taught me is that even with “casual relationships,” I am incapable of detachment, that I will always cry when it’s time to say goodbye, that I should not start something I do not have the strength to leave behind.
I imagine telling my nephews and nieces this. I also imagine my future self looking back at me now and wonder how she would write about this or how she would tell this story in the unlikely scenario that somebody will ask (the nephews and nieces probably won’t, to be honest). I hope that my future self is better at making decisions, tells these stories with ease, and bears no weight in her chest the way I do now.
I imagine that my future self will look back at me now and maybe smile wistfully. Tells me, this quest to love, to be loved, is difficult and draining for people like us. She is probably going through the same thing in the future but handling it much more maturely.
I wasn’t looking for love when I tried to meet all those people, but I did discover all the ways love can unfold and the vast intensities it presents itself. I found all the ways I am capable of loving other people, no matter how painful the goodbyes.
I did not love these people in the way I loved my ex, but I think that when I am hurting this much, it must have been some kind of love all the same.
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