Thinking I Had Lost My Feelings
For a while I thought something inside me had disappeared.
Before my burnout, I felt everything strongly.
Too strongly, perhaps.
Other people’s problems.
The atmosphere in a room.
The sadness in the news.
The tension in a conversation.
It all went straight through me.
Then something changed.
After the burnout, it was as if the volume of my feelings had been turned down.
Not completely silent.
But quieter.
I could see terrible things in the world — war, suffering, people hurting each other — and feel almost nothing.
Not cruelty.
Just distance.
At times I even wondered:
Have I become cold?
It’s a strange question to ask about yourself.
But it comes when you notice that the emotional storms you once lived inside have become… calm water.
And calm water can sometimes feel suspicious when you are used to waves.
The confusing part was this:
Beautiful things could still reach me.
If I saw someone finally receive help after years of struggle…
If someone who had nothing suddenly had a safe home…
If relief appeared where there had only been hardship…
Then something inside me moved again.
Tears came.
Not painful tears.
Gentle ones.
The kind that feel more like a long breath out.
So the feelings were not gone.
They were simply more selective.
The world’s endless tragedies no longer pulled me under.
But small moments of goodness could still reach me.
And perhaps that is not emptiness.
Perhaps it is simply a nervous system that learned, the hard way,
that it cannot carry the whole world.
And that it is allowed to rest sometimes
in the quiet relief of seeing something go right.