It took losing her, and the journey losing her has placed me on, to teach me to love openly. After I learned this, I stopped being sparing with affection.

I would no longer deliberate before showing someone love. I wouldn’t give thought before messaging classmate who’s having a hard time at their clinical site offering my support, reaching out to an old friend to see if they’d like to get together, sharing a post of a school friend and I for their birthday.

This was an important lesson for me.

To live from the heart.

But the lesson that’s followed is to be sparing with my energy.

All things are an exchange of energy. Thinking about someone, communication, affection, its all an eternal exchange that will far transcend life.

In the process, I thought that if I do live from the heart, I’ll meet other people also living from the heart. And that I’ll bring out the best of each person, the same lovingness, and we’d have a loving connection (in any context).

But what I came to see, and I say this without cynicism, is that often I’d give so much of my heart but it’d go unreciprocated.

Reaching out to school friends over the summer who don’t reach out to me first. Checking in on acquaintances who I knew were struggling. Sharing with others who seemed down how I feel about them, the love I have for them.

Sometimes I knew how one-sided it was. “That’s not what this is about,” i’d tell myself.

“Being loving isn’t about the social context.”

Seeing messages left on “READ” or “SEEN” stung.

I’d offer to take classmates out sailing under the Golden Gate who I knew wouldn’t be able to go because they have partners, and it’s just… weird.

I feel embarrassed even writing some of this.

Eventually I felt like I was giving away so much of myself, the purest parts of myself, and what I was giving was unwanted.

I’ve come to learn that everything is an exchange of energy, and although I do know how important it is to live from the heart, I also think being thoughtful about who you share your love with ensures that your love, and your heart in which it comes from, is valued. There’s something disrespectful to the self about offering your purest parts unwantedly, again and again. It changes the love you have for yourself.

I have friends who’ll slump down against the wall and cry with me, and those are the ones worthy of my heart. The ones who offer theirs. This is where my own love is valued and respectful. Which, in term, strengthens the quality of the love.

It’s not about closing the heart again, especially since I had to lose so much and suffer greatly for my heart to open. It’s not about cynicism, pessimism, or hurt feelings.

It’s about being intentional with our purest parts. Our purest self.

Since learning this, my love has turned inward and it glows brighter.