I send my mother 1.5 million pesos monthly for my postpartum wife. Coming home early, I found my wife eating spoiled rice with fish heads. Furious, I confronted my mom, who sneered, “She doesn’t deserve better.” Then, I checked the family safe and found…

”

Crack.

It was a nearly audible sound inside my own skull. The fundamental pillars of my reality fractured. The sheer horror of the moment wasn’t just that the mother of my newborn son was attempting to sustain her broken body on decomposing waste. The true, soul-shredding horror was her immediate psychological reflex. Her primary instinct wasn’t shame continue reading …