The Day I Stopped Watering Empty Gardens

I want to start this by telling you a funny story.

I have a couple of people whom I can honestly trust my life with. One of them is Krystal. She isn’t the athletic type or the kind of person who you will see running just because she feels like it. She won’t even run if she is late. But one day, I wanted to join a fun run, and I thought of asking Krystal to go with me. I asked a couple of people, too, but I just knew Krystal would say yes to me. She had never run a 5KM in her entire life, but she bought a pair of running shoes a week after we registered. A brand-new pair of Nike running shoes. She was even at the venue before I was. She didn’t even warm up for the run; she was just excited to be there. We ran. We got our finisher medals. And Krystal endured her fever-like body pain the next day, and she never regretted it. I know that for a fact because that wasn’t our first and last fun run together last year. Fine. We did two.

Before today, or before I actually realized it, I was planted with the thought that if your love for someone is genuine, you don’t demand reciprocation or even expect it. You should love because you want to love. That loving and expecting can’t coexist, or that you can’t expect your efforts to be reciprocated just because you give. I always believed that. For years, I loved a lot of people without expecting anything in return. I loved and loved and loved until I didn’t have any more of it left in me. I kept watering people’s gardens until I had dried out. It made me so sad.

I remembered someone from the past. Labeling is a thing for me, but let’s just call it that way for now. I would swim a river for this person even without a floaty. Even though I studied outside the city, I would go to her college whenever she wanted me there for her. I would spend my vacant hours in school accompanying her somewhere else. I did that because I wanted to. It was fun being with this person; I felt good because I was sought after. I felt important. That went on for years, from high school, after college, for a decade. Then one day, I woke up, and I really wanted to go somewhere, and I had no one to accompany me. I asked this person, and she declined, but suggested something she wanted to do instead. And that’s when I knew it was time.

Looking back now, to the exact day when I was planted with the idea of not expecting reciprocation, I realized that the person those seeds came from told me that because he is the kind of person who can’t reciprocate the weight of my love but enjoys receiving it. He enjoyed it enough to keep coming back, and the moment I asked to take things down a more serious path, he vanished into thin air like a thief in the night after he stole my love and attention.

He was wrong.

And reciprocation doesn’t only mean receiving the same kind of love. Reciprocation can be that you looked for my favorite book because I love reading, so I cooked you your favorite pasta because you love pasta. You ran a 5KM with me because I like running, so I joined you when you wanted to try a new cafe’s oat matcha latte because you were excited and kept talking about it. It can be as simple as me watching your favorite movie because you had been telling me how good it was, and you listening to my favorite song because I told you the lyrics speak to me. That’s exactly why love languages exist. I will love you in your love language, and I will hope you will do the same.

It’s not wrong to expect to be loved the way you love, in any form. It’s not a sin to seek reciprocation. And neither is realizing one day that a specific treatment is no longer something you can live with. It’s okay to wake up and realize, this is not how I want to be loved. I don’t want to love and lie that I don’t want to be loved in return. I want to love and be loved and flourish so I can have more love to give, in any form. And I will not allow myself to dry out for anyone.

And if you asked me, “So do I just love everyone back even when I don’t have the capacity to do it?”

You may not have the capacity to love everyone who loves you, but you have every second to tell anyone who expresses their love to you that you can’t do the same. Allowing it to stay like that is selfish, but telling them straight is another kind of reciprocation. They loved you, but you don’t feel the same, so to appreciate what they feel, you let them go so they can find the kind of love that could love them back or more.

Sit with me.

One day, someone will tell you that you are asking so much for the love that you give, and that’s an intensity not everyone is ready to give back. I want to tell you as early as now that you are listening to the wrong person because even the love you give to the universe finds its way back to you. The right person will be so excited about the love you can give that they will think of and do greater things to return it.