> I've never liked the way meditation makes me feel
This is common. A true meditation practice brings up a lot of stuff, from general body aches and pains to deep emotional things you may be unconsciously suppressing. With time and persistence, and with the right teacher, it becomes liberating though.
I don't think that's it. I've never been one to shy away from any difficult emotional experiences I have (maybe I'm wrong though who knows)
I just end up feeling emotionally "flat" after doing it. Which sometimes feels like that's the goal, but I don't like the feeling
Ah, I see, that's also very common. Taken all the way it can develop into nihilism, which is one of the two extreme views in Buddhism [1]. I fell into that early on and abandoned my practice for many years. I found that once I found the Mahayana teachings on emptiness [2] and then the stories of the Vajrayana masters [3] the practice became joyful again and not bogged down by some narrow view of what meditation is.
[1] https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Two_extremes
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81 and particularly as formulated in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prajnaparamita
[3] for example Saraha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saraha and Tilopa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilopa
Did you noticed the Sri Yantra pattern in the Prajnaparamita article?
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yantra