Is a lack of closure holding you back?

Closure.

It’s a funny thing.

Because it doesn’t look the same from one person to the next.

Some are quick to turn emotions off, and easily move on.  Some linger in suffering, and just make darkness the new normal.  Some shove their emotions under the bed, refusing to even look at them.  While others, still, walk towards a place of healing, only to realize that a single thread still ties them to their pain….at which point, a difficult choice is made to cut it.

The latter?  That’s me.

In this instance anyways.

​When you refuse to release your grip

6 months ago, I said, I’m not waiting for you.  Don’t think I’m just gonna sit on the sidelines while you figure your shit out.  I’m out.  I’m done.  You had your chance.

6 months later?  There I am.  On the sidelines.  Waiting.

How did I get here?  I thought I said I wasn’t going to do this.

Sure.  Closure is not necessarily a single event.  One and done.  It can come in waves.  Rolling in with joy.  Then out again with sadness.  In with peace.  Out with agitation.

And trust me.  I’ve been riding the tide.

But there is only so much healing you can do, when you refuse to release your grip.

The fear of letting go

And it’s funny, because you know, on paper, that unfurling your fingers will give you freedom.  But sometimes, we cling to the familiar, even if it brings us pain.  We get used to the pain and just put up with it, so that we can still kind of have the thing we know we should drop.  Maybe it’s better to have a semblance of it, than to not have it at all.  Like driving a smashed up sports car…..because technically we can still say, I drive a sports car.

To let go completely feels like forgetting.  It feels like writing it all off.  It feels like dismissing the good parts of it.  I don’t know about you, but I hate the feeling of regret.  And somehow, this feeling of release feels a little bit like regretting the whole thing ever happened.  If it meant so much, shouldn’t I cling to it a little longer?  Shouldn’t I hold the broken pieces, so I don’t lose the memory of it?

But truthfully, what good is shattered glass?

You hold it.  And almost without knowing how it happened, you realize you’re bleeding.

The tie that binds

Over the past while, I have been paralyzing myself by holding onto the potential of what could have been.  And the funny thing is, I didn’t even realize I was doing it.  Until one day I did.  What the hell.  I’ve been walking this whole time, and I haven’t gotten anywhere.

I see a thread.  This wasn’t there before, was it?  It’s so tiny.  It seems so flimsy.  How could this be the thing that is holding me back?

The playlist I can’t erase.

The house key I can’t throw away.

The phone number I can’t delete.

The one question I need answered.

The goodbye I need to say.

These things are so tiny.  And yet, intertwined, they are made of iron.  Or steel.  Or hope.

They symbolize everything.  Because that’s all that’s left.

They are potent, because they are a distillation of memories and joy and freedom and carefree abandon.

And they have the strength to prevent true closure.  True healing.

And it is so counterintuitive.  Because to hold on, is to ensure an inability to feel all those wonderful, positive, beautiful things again.  If but in a different shape.

The known vs the unknown

“But I want THIS!” my inner child screams.  I don’t want that other flavour of ice-cream.  I want this one!  Because I know I’ll love it.
It’s the fear of the unfamiliar.  The unknown.  The chance that every new fucking flavour of ice cream I try, will only ever be compared to the original, and won’t possibly be able to surpass it in deliciousness.

But THAT is the chance you must take in order to discover new forms of joy.

To cut the thread is the only way to write the final sentence of the book.  And to find closure.

The release

And so I do.

I cut it.  All in one go.  And it stings so badly, I feel like I’ve cut off a part of my own body.

The pain has been a part of me for so long.  And like the feeling you get when you first step off a treadmill after running for a good half an hour, it is strange to walk without the weight of something pulling me in the other direction.

I see myself, in slow motion, stumbling, falling forward.  Suddenly jolted from a state of tension.  I am lighter.  But I am disoriented.  Thrown off by the airiness of my gate.  I feel like maybe I’m walking on the moon.  Surely gravity has a stronger pull than this.  But no.  I’m just used to walking with the weight of the world on my shoulders.

Like a phantom limb, I feel as though I must still be tethered to the pain.  But I reach back, and feel nothing at all.  I am….unattached.  Wild and free.

It is lonely here.  And scary.  Somehow I feel the wind on my back, just a little more.

​But for me…….this is it.  

Finally.  

​Closure.

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