Freedom, With Small Mistakes

When I stepped into the study of history, I did so with a single, steady purpose: to take pleasure in my work. To savor each moment spent with what I had longed for but never believed would be mine. I entered the field like someone stepping into a long‑awaited room — quietly, reverently, half afraid that someone would tap me on the shoulder and say, “Sorry, wrong door.”

And when impatience rises, as it sometimes does, I return to the principle that brought me here: I am here for the process. For the slow, deliberate joy of learning. For the satisfaction of doing what I love, even when what I love is occasionally exhausting, confusing, or written in handwriting that looks like a spider attempted calligraphy during an emotional crisis.

The privilege of having spent ten years in a field that never felt like mine — pharmacy — is that it taught me to value what I have now. Not because the money is better. It isn’t. But that is precisely the point. I am not here for numbers. I am here for the audacity of choosing purpose over certainty, curiosity over salary, and the quiet miracle of doing what once felt impossible. I am here because I wanted a life that felt like my own, not a life that merely paid well.

And yet, last year, something shifted. It was subtle at first — like a draft in a room you thought was sealed. I began demanding too much of myself, treating even the smallest missteps with disproportionate severity. My inner voice grew sharp, almost punitive: “You’ve given up so much to be here — how can you allow yourself anything less than perfection?” It was a standard no one could meet, least of all the person who needed kindness the most.

I became the supervisor I never had — the one who stands behind your chair, breathing heavily, asking why you didn’t foresee the unforeseeable.

Over time, I realized I had been moving in a circle of my own making. Whenever feedback wasn’t what I hoped for, or when I didn’t get the jobs I wanted, even small disappointments felt sharper than they should have.

I kept insisting that it wasn’t about ego. I’ve never thought of myself as someone with a fragile ego. I don’t crumble when someone disagrees with me. I don’t need applause to function. I know I don’t have to prove my intelligence or worth to anyone.

And yet, something in me reacted as if failure carried a deeper threat.

So I asked myself, as honestly as I could: What is it that makes me so afraid of failure? Was I wrong about myself? Or was something older, quieter, and more persistent shaping my reactions?

That’s when I returned to therapy. I went back to a psychologist I had seen once before, someone who had helped me untangle similar knots. I hoped she might help me understand what was happening beneath the surface. Why did a single critical comment feel like a small earthquake? Why did a rejection letter feel like a prophecy?

After more than a year of working with her, I think I’ve finally uncovered part of the truth. I came to understand that my fear of failure was never really about competence; it was about survival. Deep down, I believed that every mistake could endanger my chance of becoming a free person. And freedom — the freedom to exist as myself without calculation or caution — was the thing I craved most fiercely as a child. It was a longing shaped by emotional instability, the kind of urgency children in safer homes never have to carry. From very early on, I knew that mistakes had consequences that reached far beyond the moment itself; even small missteps could result in my mother withdrawing from me entirely, sometimes refusing to speak to me for days. That silence taught me that errors were dangerous, that love could be suspended without warning, and that safety depended on vigilance.

Seeing this clearly didn’t make the fear vanish, but it changed its shape. It helped me separate the present from the past. It reminded me that mistakes no longer threaten my independence, and that the life I have built is sturdier than the child in me once believed.

Slowly, this understanding began to shift the way I relate to myself. I noticed how often I treated work as a test rather than a space I was allowed to inhabit. I saw how much of my ambition had been shaped by fear rather than desire — fear of repeating the life I grew up in, fear of depending on anyone, fear of being trapped again in dynamics I once fought so hard to escape.

And with that realization came a gentleness I had never granted myself before. I could finally tell myself that I am no longer the child who had to earn her freedom through perfection. I already have a life that is mine, a life that does not collapse when I make a mistake.

I don’t know how close I am to liberating myself from every childhood fear. Maybe I will always be the person who shakes while delivering a speech and cries over small mistakes. But even if that’s true, I’m grateful that I know how to feel these things differently now. The tears no longer come from panic or the sense that everything is at stake. They come from a softer place — from caring, from being human, from wanting to do well without believing that my entire future depends on it.

I’ve begun giving myself room to breathe. Room to forgive myself for not knowing something immediately, for being in the middle of learning. I’ve begun offering myself the grace I so easily offer others. I’ve allowed myself to return to the work — the way I did when I first began, when curiosity mattered more than performance, and when the joy of learning was enough.

I am returning to the version of myself who entered this field with wonder rather than dread, with excitement rather than pressure, with the quiet conviction that the process itself is the reward.

And perhaps that is the real liberation: not the absence of fear, but the ability to keep moving, keep learning, keep loving the work — even when the child in me still trembles from time to time.