The Divine Symmetry

Last week, I asked my therapist if it’s possible that some people are born to give more love than they’ll ever receive in return. She paused, gave that soft, knowing sigh that she often gives when she’s about to gently dismantle one of my lifelong beliefs, and said, in her calmest “therapist voice,” that no one is designed to go through life unloved. Some people, she explained, are simply designed different… crafted with thinner skin and wider hearts. They feel love in high definition. They notice the small, unspoken gestures that others overlook… the lingering silence in a conversation, the way someone’s eyes flicker when they’re hiding pain. These people give love like it’s oxygen, freely and instinctively, and when it isn’t returned, they feel the ache like a bruise that never fully fades. But she reminded me that this isn’t proof of being destined to live half-loved; it’s a call to protect that depth, to stop pouring oceans into thimbles. The love itself isn’t the problem… It’s holy, generous, alive. It just needs somewhere steady to land, a soul strong enough to hold it without flinching.

She let the silence hang in the air for a minute, the kind of silence that presses lightly against your chest, making you notice every small tremor in your own heartbeat. After 7 years, she knows me well, not just the surface, not just the words I spill in sessions, but the tangled architecture of my mind… the places where my overthinking loops endlessly, the hidden rooms where I store the pain. She knows when my nods are polite, but my chest is quietly shaking in disbelief, when my mind is running ahead of her words, doubting them before they’ve fully landed. That sigh she let out, the one that shifts her from professional to witness, from therapist to someone who has seen me in every shadowed corner of myself… carries a weight that makes me want to lean in closer. She spoke slower this time, letting each word press against the spaces inside me that have long felt hollow. “Sweet girl,” she said, “I’ve seen how much you give. I’ve seen how easily you stretch yourself thin, how you absorb everyone else’s pain while ignoring your own. Even though it often leaves you hurt, that’s still not a flaw. Loving the way you do will never be a flaw. The real work isn’t finding someone else to hold your heart. It’s learning to hold it yourself, to recognize its value, and to honor the way you love without judgment or apology”.

She then flipped it, asked me the same question, but told me not to answer it then, to think on it.  Do you think it’s possible that some people truly are born to give more love than they will ever get back in return? I already ask myself this often, like it’s the riddle stitched into the lining of my heart, a question that beats louder on nights when silence presses in close. Some souls absolutely seem wired this way… hearts like open floodgates, rivers that refuse to stop flowing even when the ground soaks up every last drop without thanks. They pour themselves out… holding, giving, stretching until they are paper-thin and trembling at the edges, as if the very act of loving might tear them apart. And the world, hungry and careless, takes what it can, hands outstretched, mouths open, rarely stopping to ask what it costs the giver to be emptied again and again. I’ve felt it in my own chest, this restless overflow, this ache that won’t be contained. Even knowing the risk, I still feel as though my heart was designed with an excess, an orchard that keeps bearing fruit long after the branches have cracked. It is a constant, unrelenting need to pour out, to soothe, to hold, to press love into every waiting palm, as if my purpose is to make sure no one else ever feels as invisible and as unnoticed as I sometimes do.

I’ve felt that ache in my chest, the way love gathers heavy in my palms, pressing to be released, only to fall into hands that never stay open long enough to catch it. It’s like offering water to someone who swears they’re dying of thirst, only to watch them let it spill through their fingers, uninterested once the urgency passes. Sometimes it feels like throwing buckets of water into deserts and watching the sand drink every last drop in seconds and still cry out for more. People take what they need, gulp it down as if my love is a kind of survival, and yet they never turn around to see that I’m standing there emptied, lungs heaving, heart trembling from the effort. They drink then they leave, and I’m left staring at my own dry hands, wondering who will notice when the well inside me finally caves in. I picture myself as the fire everyone gathers around in the cold… faces lit, hands outstretched, laughter rising from the warmth I provide. But when the flames flicker low, when the wood is nearly gone, they wander off into the dark without once thinking to add another log. They forget that even fire has limits, that even fire can die if it is never tended. And I’m left in the smoke and ash, choking on the proof that I was only ever loved for the light I gave, not for the ember still burning underneath.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve stretched myself thin just to make sure someone else felt whole, as if my body were elastic, meant to bend and bend until I no longer recognized my own shape. I’ve stayed up late sending the “just checking in” texts, fighting my own exhaustion just to make sure someone else felt seen, remembering birthdays, anniversaries, the way someone takes their coffee and their favorite snacks… details that no one ever bothers holding for me. I’ve been the one to lean in, to listen without rushing, to absorb the weight of other people’s storms until my own shoulders sag, yet when my sky splits open, I stand mostly alone, drenched and shaking. It feels like screaming into a canyon, my throat raw with the effort, and the only thing that comes back is my own echo, bouncing off the walls, reminding me just how empty it really is. There is nothing more hollow than realizing your love has been loud, relentless, and undeniable, yet still unheard.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s strength or tragedy, this capacity to love beyond measure. To give until I’m hollow, to hand over pieces of myself like offerings, ribs split wide as if my chest were meant to be someone else’s shelter. I know what it feels like to build a home out of my own body… my heart the walls, my arms the roof… and still feel the echo of emptiness when night comes and no one stays. I’m always the one who remembers the tiniest details, what song someone played on repeat, the way their voice broke when they spoke about their father, the exact shade of sadness in their eyes when they thought no one noticed. I look directly into people, past their rehearsed smiles, straight into the fractures they try to hide, and I hold them like they’re sacred. But when my own silence grows thick and heavy, it’s met with frustration because I stopped feeding into them or worse… nothing at all. No hand reaching back, no voice breaking through the quiet. And when my tears fall, they seem to vanish before they can even be named, absorbed into the floorboards and swallowed by the air as if my grief were invisible, as if I were invisible. There’s a violence in that kind of neglect, a quiet cruelty in giving everything and watching your own unraveling go unseen.

I imagine some people are made to be oceans, and others are made to simply dip their toes in. The ocean doesn’t beg to be loved, doesn’t demand that the swimmer stay… it just keeps moving, steady and relentless, even when no one is watching. It offers waves to play in, salt to heal wounds, depths to drown sorrows, and still it is left again and again. People take their swim, laugh in the shallows, let the water hold them for a moment, and then they walk away, forgetting that the tide continues long after they’ve gone. The ocean carries ships on its back, keeps their secrets buried in its floor, absorbs storms that no one else can contain, and still it is expected to keep giving, to remain beautiful, vast, and available. Maybe that’s what I am… something endless, something that loves without measure, even when it costs me. My tides rise for people who never notice the pull, my depths ache with things no one dives deep enough to see, and still I keep moving, offering pieces of myself because I don’t know how to do anything else. Loving, for me, is less a choice and more a law of nature, like the way the moon pulls at the sea, I am compelled, regardless of who stays, regardless of who walks away.

And yet, there’s a part of me that aches for reciprocity. A small, flickering hope that one day someone might love me with the same unrestrained, bone-deep intensity I pour into the world. I long to be seen not as a well to draw from, not as a fire to warm their cold hands, but as a soul, raw and trembling and alive, deserving of the same ferocity I offer without hesitation. I ache for someone to trace the cracks in me, to hold the jagged edges of my heart as tenderly as I hold theirs. Until that day, I keep pouring, keep burning, keep flooding every space I enter, leaving traces of myself like ink on paper, hoping that maybe one person will read it all. Because some of us were born with hearts too full, too vast to ever stay quiet, even when the world refuses to echo our cries. We shout into the dark anyway, release our tides, our flames, our love, because silence is not an option for hearts that were made to overflow and even if no one returns it, even if it breaks us over and over, we cannot stop.

So yea, perhaps some of us are born to give more than we will ever receive in return, and the weight of that truth is both our curse and our unshakable pulse. Maybe that’s the cost of having a heart that refuses to harden, even after being broken repeatedly. Because how else do you explain people like me… the ones who love past reason, past self-preservation, who keep showing up with trembling hands and open palms even after being met with silence? I have to believe that love like this does exist, because I exist. I have to believe it’s out there, because my soul wouldn’t ache this way if it weren’t. There’s a pulse inside me that beats for something bigger than casual affection, something sacred and steady, like a lighthouse that’s seen every kind of storm and still chooses to shine. I have to believe that somewhere, someone was built with the same kind of gravity, the same unrelenting tenderness, the same ache to meet another soul without the armor. Because I’ve tried to quiet it. I’ve tried to shrink, to pretend I’m fine with surface-level love that never looks me in the eye and yet, something in me keeps rising, refusing to settle. Because something in me was built for the kind of love that doesn’t flinch at the mess or shrink from the dark, the kind that doesn’t walk away when the storm hits but instead anchors itself deeper. I have to believe it’s real, because my heart wouldn’t keep searching, breaking, and rebuilding itself if it wasn’t. I was made to love in a way that feels ancient and bone-deep, a kind of love that wants to know someone’s soul the way the ocean knows the moon… pulled, surrendered, endless. And maybe that means the love I’m searching for has to exist somewhere, because it’s reflected in me.. in my ache, in my softness, in my relentless hope. Maybe I am the evidence: a living echo of a love I haven’t met yet but somehow remember, a divine symmetry whispering that what lives in me must live out there, too.