Lessons from the bar
The waiting had already taught me how to disappear.
For weeks after the bar, I pretended I hadn’t taken it at all. I filled my days with a frantic devotion, leaving no space for fear to settle. I returned to Leyte, my first home, smiling through gentle conversations and dodging questions. Sometimes I laughed them off; sometimes I lied. Admitting I was waiting for results felt like admitting how fragile I really was.
The hardest part, I think, had already happened.
The months leading up to the bar were heavy. They were a blur of pressure and persistence, of waking up tired and going to sleep afraid. My body bore the brunt of it first. Psoriasis flared across my skin, a physical manifestation of a mind that knew no peace. Then, a week before the first day of exams, Venti died.
Venti was a stray cat we rescued from the vents on campus. I had helped start an advocacy program for cats on campus, and Venti became one of its quiet symbols: small, trusting, and endlessly kind. That night, she meowed softly, brushing against me, asking for attention. I was studying, exhausted, and she wasn’t allowed inside the building. Fearing she’d get in trouble, I turned away. Minutes later, she was hit by a car.
Grief arrived tangled with sharp guilt. I cried until my eyes burned, eventually developing a stye from wiping my tears away with only my hands. My body recorded what my mind couldn’t process. This fractured vision became my reality. I reviewed with one eye open and the other almost swollen shut, holding a hot compress in place while trying to read through pages that blurred together. It felt cruel and absurd, but also fitting. My sight was physically limited, much like my spirit was narrowed by the sheer weight of the season.
In that state, the tears came often. I cried because the syllabus felt endless. I cried because no matter how much I studied, every day ended with the same quiet accusation: you have not done enough. You are not ready. The law demanded everything: time, energy, certainty, and still asked for more.
What carried me through was not strength, but people.
My school, with a generosity I will never forget, opened the student lounge for bar takers. It became more than a study area; it became a shelter. It absorbed our exhaustion and our late-night, caffeine-fueled anxieties. My chosen family was there: my best friends, my blockmates, and my “forest friends.” We called ourselves that because we used the Forest app together, growing digital trees as we tracked our study time. It was a small thing, almost childish on the surface, but it mattered.
In that space, I learned something the law itself never taught me: that dreams survive best when they are shared. That ambition does not have to be cruel. That another person’s success does not take away from your own becoming.
On the day the results were to be released, I locked myself in my room. I watched the livestream alone, convinced that sharing the moment would make the stakes unbearable. When my name appeared on the screen, the world did not erupt; it stilled.
Relief came slowly, then all at once. And with it came something heavier: gratitude so deep it hurt. I collapsed into tears, though not from terror, but from release. I cried from the realization that I had survived something I was never sure I could.
I thought of the moments when we were breaking. I thought of the friends who grew forests with me, one focused minute at a time. I thought of the lies I told because fear made honesty feel impossible. I thought of my parents waiting outside that door, believing in me without conditions and without guarantees.
And I understood, finally, that I had never been alone.
Dreams, I have learned, are not solitary pursuits. No matter how personal they feel, they are built by many hands. They are sustained by kindness, patience, and the willingness of others to walk beside you even when they are carrying their own fears. Someone else’s victory does not diminish your own. Another person’s success does not steal from your future. There is room for all of us, if only we allow ourselves to believe it.
If there is anything this journey has taught me, it is this: be kind, especially when ambition tempts you not to be. Help where you can. Share what you know. Celebrate the wins of others without fear that they eclipse you. The pursuit of a dream does not require cruelty. It does not demand isolation. More often than not, it demands community.
And when you find yourself locked in a room with nothing but your thoughts and a future you cannot yet see, remember this: you did not arrive there alone, and you do not have to face what comes next by yourself either. Someone has always been holding the door open.
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Erika Oreta, 26, is a 2025 bar passer. She holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of the Philippines College of Law and earned her undergraduate degree in political science from De La Salle University.
