Part 2: How to define what to do for the rest of my life when I was just defining who I was as a person? – Alexandra Serna Toro

I began to discover my abilities; my artistic streak, a social interest, an awareness for the environment and the countryside, but behind it I had a family and a society that stigmatized these interests as superfluous and unofficial. Partially because I come from a place where I never lacked food, but there were financial shortages. I don’t blame them for thinking like that but stability in life for them has only one meaning and it is having money, whereas my stability is personal fulfillment.

As the song Baldor de Alcolirykoz says “because when you buy with silver, you are not buying with silver, you are buying with the time of your life, that you had to spend to have that silver ”. So are you giving life and not even feeling happy?

After a lot of hassle and unsuccessful attempts at varied interests, I decided to merge my ideas of the world with my family’s wishes (job offer, stable job, good salary), believing in a balance I began to study forestal engineering, (no, no is the same as environmental engineering). Initially I was satisfied, I thought that my exaggerated positivism would work.

Going deeper and deeper into my studies I began to feel sadness and frustration, I lived on autopilot and just endured. If they talked to me about my studies, I always diverted the conversations because t I did not want to accept the fact that this was not for me, and above that I was afraid of disappointing everyone and feeling that I failed. Perhaps my accommodating personality put the approval of others above my well-being. The subjects of the faculty of human sciences and history literally became the only reason to go to study and I entered a depression, locking myself in my thoughts saying things like:

“It is ridiculous that this is a problem when there are so many who do not have my opportunities when there are people with real problems”

Thanks to life and causality, I discovered freedom and fullness when dancing, I also started acting in some artistic corporations, and that became a respite motivation. I began to think what the hell was I doing with MY LIFE, accepting that I was failing, but not because I disappointed my parents by not meeting their expectations, or because I had “lost my time” in engineering. I was failing because I wasn’t happy, so as a vile coward on the sly and secretly I started studying Sociology without leaving engineering. I had a job and studied in the two universities, even though I thought that the wear and tear was worth it was demanding a lot from my body and my brain, which manifested itself in an anxiety attack.