Hello everyone,
Please excuse the three week hiatus; life got crazy again. I must be one more personal emergency away from doing something drastic like relocating to a foreign country, dying my hair, or committing arson.
Amidst the insanity that has been Summer of 2022, I have been working on this piece on the thing we all feel we need, but so rarely get: closure. It’s a long one and I’m not certain it makes complete sense, but that – in itself – accurately reflects my own personal pursuit of closure.
So let’s get into it.
Often, the only way we can comprehend the messiness of our lives is through simple narrative structures: beginnings, middles, and ends. Ideally, endings should be neat, final, and coherent – that is, they should be concurrent with whatever’s come before. After all, there is nothing worse than investing time in a book, tv show, or three-hour film, if the ending is going to leave us confused or underwhelmed. Such endings make us feel cheated, like our time has been wasted. And when we’re super invested in certain characters or storylines, shock-endings like that of Killing Eve’s series finale can outrage and upset us (and rightly so – what the fuck was that?). Real life is much the same; we want our stories to make complete sense, thus we want endings which satisfy our desire for catharsis and, ultimately, closure.
But what is closure? What does that look like? We talk about it a lot in relation to break-ups, often citing the exchange-of-each-other’s-personal-items as an “opportunity for closure”, when the two of you can look into one another’s eyes and say the things broken-up-couples say like “I’m sorry”, “of course I still care about you”, and “yes, we can still be friends.” Closure has become a cliched post-break-up goal, something to be sought after, but is rarely ever found. It is the holy grail of break-ups.
Technically speaking, closure is defined as follows:
“an often comforting or satisfying sense of finality […] something (such as a satisfying ending) that provides such a sense” (Miriam Webster)
“If someone achieves closure, they succeed in accepting something bad that has happened to them.” (Collins Dictionary)
“the feeling or act of bringing an unpleasant situation, time, or experience to an end, so that you are able to start new activities” (Cambridge Dictionary)
From these, we can discern that closure is comprised of: acceptance, finality, satisfaction, relief, optimism (if you’re lucky). To achieve closure is to leave the past behind, bury the Hatchett, and move on.
As some of you already know, I’ve been denied closure on a number of occasions this summer, leaving me with raging fires burning everywhere, and just the one bucket of water available to put them out. It’s not quite been the Hot Girl Summer I was hoping for.
On a Tuesday afternoon, the day before I’m due to visit, I am unceremoniously dumped over FaceTime by my boyfriend of 18 months. The call lasts little more than twenty minutes. I spend the next two hours taking solace in my contact-list, sobbing over the phone to my friends, and then to my flatmate upon her arrival home from the airport. The cruellest thing about a virtual break up is the intangibility of it. You can’t touch the other person, your respective feelings can’t permeate the flat screen, leaving phrases like “I can't be a good boyfriend to you” hanging suspended, unclaimed – lost somewhere between South Wales and East London. How are you supposed to accept something which isn’t really happening, when it is confined to the same blue-lit space you watch Love Island on?
On a Friday afternoon, the day I test positive for Covid (leaving me unable to attend my cousin’s hen-do, or see anyone, for that matter), I receive a call from the police. They inform me that there’s a high likelihood that my sexual assault case will be dropped. The case isn’t necessarily closed, but it probably will be. I can’t stop thinking “I went through all that – all that – for nothing.” Of course, assault is a senseless violent act that happens without rhyme or reason. In this case, the lack of any justice was too much for me to handle. A bad thing had happened and there had been little to no repercussions for those responsible. This happens all the time, but – being as young and naive as I am – I wasn’t prepared for this reality.
On another Tuesday afternoon, the day I am meant to be attending a Lorde concert with tickets bought for me by my now-ex-boyfriend, I receive a call from the GP. After my incredibly garbled delivery of why I felt I was at rock bottom, he signs me off from work for a week – only for another GP to sign me off for another three weeks. Thus, I disappear from the office I’d worked in for the past two months. I don’t say goodbye to anyone, I can barely explain the situation to my manager. I am gone. Ten days later, I call my manager, to let her know that I’ll be handing my notice in. That’s it. The end of my first ever adult job.
What do all three of these scenarios have in common? The fucking phone. I am processing break-ups, systematic injustices, and quitting my first adult job from my bedroom. It is hard to actualise these experiences when you can’t be in the spaces, or with the people, you associate them with. This is why, a couple of weeks ago, I took the opportunity to drop by my old office and drop off the kit I’d been assigned when I started there just a few months before. The idea of going back to the office, where I’d cried in numerous bathrooms and sporadically taken calls from the police, made me feel sick. However, reliving the dreaded central line commute to Oxford Circus was not as bad as I expected; I knew this would be the last time I hurriedly cross the busy roads between Oxford Street and Fitzrovia. After dropping my laptop off I felt elated and relieved; I’d gotten through the experience without bursting into tears.
I was even emboldened enough to take a detour to Leicester Square, to revisit the scene of the crime that marked the beginning of what became the most challenging period of my adult life (so far). I got to the shopfront, removed my airpods, took a few breaths, and stepped inside. The shop was not as I remembered it. I scanned the shelves, trying to locate the event amidst shelves of American Candy and vapes. And I took my time, wandering around the shop, taking every corner, door, and staircase in to piece together my movements on that night.
Although I didn’t enter the shop with vengeful intent, I was overcome (as hot girls like myself often are) with the urge to exact some petty revenge. A packet of jellybeans is by no means “making it even”, when what was taken from me that night amounts to far more than an assortment of flavoured gelatine, but it felt good to take something back – however small. If they could get away with assaulting me, I should get away with my own small clandestine act. And I did. After some careful consideration, my fingers landed on the packet of jellybeans which I took from the shelf and slipped into my tote bag. This time, instead of fleeing the scene, I took my time over my exit. I swanned out and into the din of Leicester Square, jellybeans secured, and a sense of control reclaimed.
What’s dawned on me as I write this is the reality that closure – by its very nature – cannot be found in whatever it is that’s made you miserable in the first place. That is to say, closure cannot be found in your ex-partner, friend, employer, whatever.
Whilst a goodbye to old co-workers, some stollen jellybeans, and a post-break-up debrief can help, none of these things will necessarily result in the life-changing moment of clarity you might be chasing. Closure is not a “moment”, it is a gradual phasing out of whatever-happened, a process which happens naturally with the passage of time. You wake up with something – or someone – new on your mind, you start to feel lighter and less encumbered by what’s happened. I was stagnant for a little while, trapped in the feelings of loss, rejection, heartbreak, fear, and outrage, which the events of May left me with. Having started my new job, been to a festival, and deleted all dating apps, I can feel that closure is finally beginning to settle on my life.
I don’t believe that closure is necessarily a destination, nor can it be located in an isolated moment or event. It arrives in fragments, in small wins, until eventually the past is buried beneath what will become the foundations for your present and future endeavours. Break-ups, traumas – and other such like – become the fertile ground we tread as we move towards whatever new chapter life has in store.
***
I will halt this week’s rambling there as I am struggling to stay awake in the back of my dad’s car, en route back to London, where my new chapter awaits. August and September will bear the usual fruits of newness: new job, new house, new hair, new love interests. Only the first of these is secured – the rest I am manifesting.
Until next week <3