I always thought 2026 would be my year.
A year of elevation. A year of going beyond the limits. Because honestly, my 2025 was a year of breakthroughs.
I got into my dream university to pursue my master’s degree. I realized that my career is both rewarding and empowering, and it lets me inspire younger generations. Most importantly, I was able to pursue passions like graphic design and feature writing.
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I came into the first month of 2026 with radical optimism, ready to take on the challenge of what lies ahead. Then, all of a sudden—reality slapped me. I had the will to defy gravity, but the force was too strong for me to pick myself up and face the aftermath of the mistakes I’ve made.
I was slowly unravelling a thread of mistakes that resurfaced and exposed my incompetence, inconsistencies, and negligence. I became a cautionary tale. I became the subject of people’s conversations. I became either a narrative that deserves pity or intense criticism. Sometimes, I couldn’t bear to look at people in the eye and flash them a smile because I was too busy overthinking what they thought of me.
It came to a point that after committing one mistake, followed by a couple more, I slowly realized that instead of becoming a strategic asset, I had turned into a replaceable disposable. It dawned on me that maybe I did not deserve to laugh or smile after what I’ve done. I wanted to morph into the darkness, remain unnoticed, and just keep on working silently.
I wanted to admit that I was okay, even though it was hard to keep being strong when I felt weak.
There were sleepless nights, a lot of contemplating, and recognizing the anxieties I’ve been so afraid to talk about. Some moments made me question if the mistakes I’ve made automatically made me a bad person. That’s the sad part: when you make a mistake, no matter how hard you try to clear your name, no amount of good you’ve done could replace the impact of the mistakes you’ve committed.
But after some time, you realize that all the pain and vulnerability that you’ve felt was necessary. That the consequences of the mistakes you have made needed to be felt to truly grow and transform in the pursuit of becoming the best version of yourself. At some point, it’s not adding salt to the wound, but as the pain pierces through our hearts, we also realize that we are still alive, we’re still standing, we still have a chance to make things right and not just merely allow people to equate our mistakes to the entirety of our being.
For the longest time, I always cared about what other people had to say about me, but this time, I am emancipating myself from people’s perceptions of me. I’ve made peace with the fact that no matter what I do, whether it’s a mistake or a good deed, everyone will still have an opinion about me—but I do have a choice. I can keep on trying to change or convince them of what they think of me, or I could just simply let them be and let go, knowing that people are going to talk about you since it is the price when you make a mistake.
There were three things that I’ve learnt throughout this entire experience.
First, I never thought how strong I was, because while the thought of giving up was barely an option that presented itself as a choice, I kept showing up, living life, and accepting that it is innately within the nature of human beings to make mistakes. Of course, a part of me wanted to go back in time, and if I could, I would’ve done things differently—but we must not keep on regretting because this could limit us from becoming truly happy. It may take years, but you must eventually learn to forgive yourself.
Second, while you may feel that the entire world has turned its back on you—it actually did not. During the toughest times, the compassion, love, and support from genuine people eventually find their way to you, and you will feel comforted, making the pain a little more bearable.
Finally, I have come to realize that the world did not stop when I made a mistake. Life did not stop when I experienced the lowest of lows. When I committed mistakes, it was not the epilogue of the story, but a prologue of what’s yet to come and what’s still out there for me to experience. Let the mistakes we have made become a reminder that life is not all about consistency and winning, but sometimes even in failure we can see that we dared to try, and we can see growth. Mistakes don’t define us, but the courage to continue does.
Life goes on even after you make mistakes, and so must you.
