Week 12-13: Unfamiliar Heaven

3–4 minutes

Dear you,

I wrote last week’s letter, but I wasn’t happy with it. Sometimes what’s inside my head feels too tangled to put on paper. The words don’t come, and the answers to my own questions slip away.

Getting older is strange, isn’t it? As kids, we believe the adults around us hold the answers. Then we grow up, step into their shoes, and realize no one really knows what they’re doing. Everyone is fumbling through life for the very first time. Maybe being an “adult” just means pretending you understand, long enough to convince yourself and everyone else. But if there’s any secret to it, maybe it’s this: before you can know the world, you have to know yourself.

Since turning 20, I’ve been chasing that question of who I am. Picking apart my good habits and my bad ones. By 21, I decided to make it my mission to “find myself,” because that’s what they tell you your twenties are for. The thing is, there’s no manual. No clear definition. What does it even mean to find yourself? To me, it feels like remembering. Remembering the version of you that existed before the world pressed down with rules and expectations. Before you learned that your quirks weren’t cool, and uniqueness was something to hide.

I think that’s why so many of us travel. To step out of the familiar story we’ve been living in and listen to the voice that gets drowned out at home. When I applied for this internship, it wasn’t just for career growth. It was an escape. A need to run. From my surroundings, from my habits, from the version of myself I had become. Something in me knew I had to leave, and I’m glad I listened. Glad I found myself here, in this in-between phase of life.

Maybe people travel to be alone. To have nobody fill the silence except our own thoughts and heartbeat. To be far from everyone and everything we love. To sit with ourselves, alone at midnight, when the world is quiet and only we remain. At first, it’s sad. But once that sadness passes, it becomes something else entirely: peace.

Here, away from the noise of home, I’m slowly finding my way back. I’m noticing what truly lifts me and what weighs me down; people, places, foods, even thoughts. Colombia has been a mirror, showing me both the habits I’ve carried and the ones I want to shed. It feels like a test: when nobody’s watching, when I’m far from everything familiar, do I still choose to be the person I say I am? Or was I only pretending, shaped by trends, comfort, and other people’s opinions?

Little things reveal the truth, like chai tea lattes. Back home, everyone drank them, so I did too. But here, coffee is everywhere, and still I crave chai. So maybe that craving is mine. That small detail feels like a clue, a reminder that beneath the layers I’ve picked up along the way, there’s a version of me that’s real.

I used to accept certain traits just because people told me I had them. But here, I’m learning to ask: Do these qualities belong to me, or did I just grow into someone else’s idea of who I should be?

The other day, I heard a line that stuck with me: “Your nervous system will always choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven.” Comfort can chain us to what hurts, simply because it’s known. But maybe the path back to yourself is choosing the unknown anyway. Walking toward the unfamiliar heaven, even if your knees shake.

Sorry, this letter is less a record of my days here, more a record of my thoughts.

From,
Cali