Months ago, I wrote a piece about unreciprocated love and the feelings that would arise when someone did everything they could for others only to receive little to nothing in return. Since then, I’ve come to a realization – well, several actually. Firstly, everyone is different and no, this isn’t news to me. But what I’ve come to realize (about most of my friends) is that their means of communicating is unlike mine, which is okay and just because they don’t wear their heart on their sleeves as I do, doesn’t mean their love isn’t there. Not to get scientific but it’s like the law of conservation of energy – energy cannot be created or destroyed, it just changes forms. Basically, what is happening is not an absence of energy or love for me, it’s merely expressed in other ways. But there is a fine line between that and a friendship where far more is going in than is coming out – when all the energy is coming from you and not coming back.

I’ve had friendships that were one-sided and that’s not the fault of anyone but me because I chose to offer everything within me without caring that there was nothing coming my way: not gratitude, not energy in a different form, or care for me in any shape or form. Initially, I wouldn’t mind it because that’s just who I am, but then, I realized my kindness was being taken advantage of, and instead of attributing that to other people, I attributed it to being a flaw in me. In that way, I was living for people who were not putting life back into me, but draining it from me. Not only was it draining because of how much I was giving, but because it was beginning to impact my perception of myself. In my mind, their lack of recognition of me was indicative of my value.  I had to be inadequate in some way – it was the only thing that made sense. But if you have been, or are, where I am, please hear me when I say this makes absolutely no sense.

Determining your value based on how someone else is treating you is not only costly, it is futile. There’s this sense that we can change people – that if we treat an un-reciprocating person good enough then that will make them respect us and treat us better, but that’s not sensical at all. In fact, that is the very definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. But thanks be to God that when I do feel drained by the people around me because of the tasks I’ve chosen to take on, He fills me up. 

Everything we search for in people  – be it love, reciprocity, respect, value, availability, etc., are all things that God offers us, and has offered us since the day we were born. For a long time, I was in pursuit of a relationship like my mother and father’s and a friend that was just like me, but there is no relationship like theirs because it belongs to them and mine will be beautiful in its own way, and I won’t ever have a friend like me because there is only one me. We, as humans, are imperfect, we make mistakes and even with the best of intentions, end up hurting the people we love. But God? I can’t say the same for Him. He actually is perfect and every time I think I have the right to feel slighted, I think about how He must feel. I think about the fact that He sent His son to die for mankind only for us to forsake Him, to live life unaware of all that He can provide for us and already has.