The Myth of Closure

Closure, for the most part, is a myth. When we seek for it from others, we rarely get it.  Last week I spoke of leaving Houston and the temptation of calling an old friend.  She meant a lot to me.  She made me smile, made me run, made my legs scream with the workouts she designed, but she also make me happy, she made me smile, she tempted me, she shared with me, and , I believe, we fell in love. 

So, she ended it.

Love is an awful thing at the wrong time or with the wrong person. 

Some say that you can’t control who you fall in love with, but that’s a lie too.  I felt my emotions growing and I knew where they would lead, but I kept calling her, answering her e-mails, her chats, her winks, her invitations to fly to Houston and run with her in the woods.  I went willingly every step of the way, and then it ended. 

It ended just as most relationships end.  They die of a fatal reality check in the form of a wife, a boyfriend, 800 miles, a job assignment in the wrong direction, and did I mention, a boyfriend and a wife?

Flashback to mistress #1.  Touching, flirting, cumming, kisses and caresses, and then the threat of a lawsuit and the cold shoulder from her inner-circle.  WTF?    A job transfer, an angry meeting, a formal letter, and it was done.

Flash further back.  Dating, first love, long letters during the summer and longer phone calls in the fall.  “I’ll be back soon” I promised, “the semester ends in May.”Her letter said that I needn’t bother hurrying.  His name was Paul and they were engaged. 

Then there was the architect, young, beautiful, smart, talented (I should have known then it would end badly for me).  Tentative dates, a first kiss, a comfort level and fleeting happiness.  Then the Jacuzzi.  Touches increasingly intimate, her full breasts in my hands, not a word spoken as her breathing changed for the first time, until the timer clicked and the bubbles stopped.  She looked down in the silence of the fall air and saw her bikini top floating across the spa, my hands holding her, no bubbles to hide the reality, no words to mask her guilt.  She stood, left, and never called. 

I got true closure only once, well documented here, she called me because she need a final moment as much as I did, but not all closure ends with a gasp and a grunt and a long tearful hug in the back of her VW. 

So why do we even seek this mythical moment?  What is magic about “closure?” A word thrown out as if it will make the hurt go away.  Love is messy, undefined, and open-ended in the best of case, but it ends with a thud, a scream, an attorney, and that’s it, the end. 

Movies lie.  There is no chance meeting on the street that fades, with the appropriate music, to a quiet coffee in the quaint bistro as the rain runs down antique glass with “O’Malley’s painted in gold.    There is no soft touch to the cheek as forgiveness is offered and accepted.  There is no final hug.   Sometimes you stand the grave of a relationship forever, knowing that it is dead, but hoping for one last visit from beyond.  It doesn’t happen.

The search for closure gets us off the hook.  It gives us an emotional out.  We tell ourselves that they don’t really hate us, still, they can’t, we just haven’t seen each other to say our mea culpas.  They can’t be ignoring my calls, their phone must be broken, or they are are out of cell coverage, or maybe they lost their way and are looking for us right now.

No, they are not.  This is just fantasy. 

She really does still hate me, you will get served if you go within 100 feet of her, and yes, she really does lover her husband and no, she’s not going to leave him, ever.  EVER.

We seek closure so we can sleep at night, so we can tell ourselves that we weren’t an ass to her, that he doesn’t love another, or that she didn’t lose our number, she deleted it and then emptied the recycle bin and then ran de-frag to scour the place where our number used to be like a virus in her mind.

We don’t get closure.  People leave, they die, the walk way without that final moment that plays out in our heads.  But don’t despair, every story has a cliff hanger, every mystery has suspense, it’s part of the plot.