In September 2024, after a long conversation with @SoyFira and several deep talks with two close friends, I found myself reflecting on how much I had learned that year. I decided to write about it not because I had all the answers, but because trying to feel had been as confusing as it had been enlightening. I’ve always preferred to rationalize emotions instead of experiencing them. That year pushed me into territory I had never entered before, and writing was one way to admit that understanding what I felt might begin with living it, recognizing it, and letting it move through me.
Or at least, that’s what I’m told.
I’ve always been someone with flat emotions, someone who observes life from a neutral place, without those peaks of joy or sadness that seem so common in others. Life has shown me good and bad things, but I’ve often responded to them with a simple nod, as if everything could be managed with a cold, rational gaze. It’s not that I don’t feel; I’ve always felt less, or perhaps in a more muted way. But that year taught me something I didn’t expect: in the midst of that calm, in that firm ground I thought I had under control, there were deeper emotions just waiting for the right moment to surface and destabilize everything I believed to be true.
It all began slowly, as if the small changes at the end of the previous year were just circumstantial problems. But what seemed manageable at first started to weigh more and more until the accumulation became too much. First, the company I had dedicated years to began to struggle. It wasn’t financial issues; it was as if everything I had built with effort started to unravel. And the worst part was that, as it was happening, I didn’t feel the panic or desperation one would expect in such a situation. I wasn’t overwhelmed with emotions; there was only a kind of controlled helplessness, as if my mind insisted that everything could be fixed if I kept searching for solutions. That calm, which had always seemed like a strength, began to feel strange in the midst of so much chaos.
Soon after, my mother’s illness worsened significantly. This forced me to completely change my plans. I had decided to move to Mexico, to start a new phase of my life, but that plan vanished the moment I learned that my brother, who cares for my mother, needed me. So I put my plans aside and returned to Medellín, the city where I grew up but where I have always felt like a stranger.
Medellín, which should be my home, has always stirred in me a strange sense of disconnection. Coming back here didn’t bring me stability or a sense of belonging as I had hoped; on the contrary, it amplified my feeling of not fitting in. The streets that used to be familiar now felt distant, as if I were walking among memories of a life that is no longer mine. Every corner is a mix of nostalgia and strangeness, and although it’s the city where I grew up, it constantly reminds me that I don’t fully belong anywhere. And that feeling of being out of place isn’t limited to the city; it’s been a constant in my life, moving between different worlds but never finding a place where I truly feel part of something.
And in the midst of all this, the breakup with the person I’ve loved the most was the final blow. She decided that it wasn’t the right time for us to be together, and that decision left me without solid ground. I always thought I wasn’t someone who felt deeply, or at least that’s what I believed. But when she left, something inside me broke in a way I didn’t know was possible. My first instinct was the same as always: to try to understand it. Why? How? What caused it? As if unraveling the reasons behind her departure could ease the impact of her absence.
It’s funny how, in its need to maintain control, the mind constantly seeks explanations. I spent much of that year trying to rationalize what was happening to me, trying to make sense of every loss and every change. But I reached a point where I realized I didn’t have enough answers. And that’s when I understood that not only was I incapable of feeling deeply, but I also didn’t know how to manage what was happening inside me. That’s why I ended up reading Daniel Goleman.
While reading Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, I found the phrase “amygdala hijack” useful for naming the feeling of being overtaken by an emotion. I had rarely recognized that experience in myself. It felt as if my emotions arrived filtered and controlled, as if I had learned to keep feeling at a distance. This is a personal metaphor for what was happening, not a diagnosis or a claim about my brain.
Trying to control my emotions had led me to suppress them. I needed something more physical than another explanation. That’s when yoga and meditation began to make sense. I understood them as practices that could help me notice what was happening in my body instead of immediately explaining it away. For the first time, this wasn’t just theory; it was something tangible I could practice.
Even so, despite all I’d read and learned, I still hadn’t been able to let go of control. I’d been practicing yoga and meditation, trying to connect more with my emotions, but I was still struggling. My friends told me I needed to let go, that I needed to live my emotions, but for me, that was like trying to catch smoke with my hands. I didn’t know how to let go of control. That year forced me to confront the disconnection between what I felt and what I thought I should feel.
It’s like in Dune, one of my favorite books, where Paul Atreides has to cross a sandstorm and survive by allowing the ship to be carried by it. I’m still incapable of letting go of the helm. But something has changed: I’ve started to accept that emotions don’t have to be understood before they can be lived. Maybe I need time to release control step by step, and let myself be carried by my own storm.
