Over the past few months I’ve been thinking, on and off, about the concept of closure. How people crave it, how often they feel entitled to it, how the popular culture seems to indicate it is both necessary and probable, and how the reality is far from it.
You send a grant to a funding agency, and it comes with brief, infuriatingly vague comments. There’s nothing actionable in the feedback. You wish you could somehow reach through the funding-agency portal and into the past to grab the reviewer by the shoulders and shake them until they tell you what exactly it is that they didn’t like in your meticulously written proposal. The truth is, you will never really know. You will have to go with your experience if you are to revise. Maybe the reviewer’s own Dunning-Kruger prevented them from admitting they didn’t understand the project. Maybe they didn’t take the review seriously enough. Bottom line is, they didn’t like it, so it won’t get funded. You will never know exactly why.
A friend ghosts you. A romantic partner breaks it off with some it’s-not-you-it’s-me faux reason. They will probably never tell you why. Does it even matter why? You can try to figure it out on your own, but it won’t change the outcome. Ultimately, they’re gone.
Why do we expect closure? I understand craving it, but why do we feel entitled to it? Part of it is not wanting to admit that things are over, and hopelessly so. Part of it is probably because popular culture makes it seem that closure is necessary in order to move on, and also likely. In popular movies, there are no loose ends at the conclusion of the narrative arc. The character faces their nemesis or an estranged parent or a former lover. Everything gets wrapped up, with in a neat little bow on top, because that’s how compelling storytelling works. The movies where things are left open-ended are considered artsy at best, bad and infuriating at worst. But they are closer to reality than the popular fare.
People who are in our lives don’t owe it to us to remain in our lives. Maybe we outlived our usefulness; this is cold and calculated, but sadly quite common. Maybe we hurt them or neglected them; then it’s out fault that they left. The point is, once someone is out of your life and doesn’t seem responsive to nudges, let them be. There’s no point in chasing them under the guise of seeking closure, because you already know the most important thing you need to know—they don’t want to be around anymore. It’s often a small mercy that they don’t relent in your quest to give you closure; are you sure you really want to know all the ways in which you suck?
I have certainly cut off contact with people without pomp or circumstance. If they deeply reflected on our relationship, they could probably figure out what was bothering me and what the reason was behind the withdrawal, but in a true Catch-22 situation, had they been able to reflect to the needed degree, we would not have gotten to the point that I had to withdraw. “But how will they know to do better next time?” you ask. I don’t care; it’s not my problem anymore. I don’t owe anyone an explanation after we no longer have a relationship. They have all they need to figure things out if they want to, but they probably won’t. I don’t owe them more emotional work.
A couple of months ago, a beta reader for my novel commented how a character needed to get closure in their relationship with a parent who’d spent the character’s whole life being avoidant and neglectful. The reader said the character needed a big moment of facing said parent and sharing their hurt. I don’t think so. Someone whose job was to love and cherish you failed to do so for years; you think they give a shit about your hurt feelings? You think they will be shocked and dismayed at the damage they’ve done? Hell no. That is probably what they were going for to begin with, even if it wasn’t fully conscious. No character of mine is going to give a horrible parent the satisfaction of articulating their own hurt. It wouldn’t be closure; it would ultimate humiliation. The parent can go @#$%&#%^ themselves while the character purges them from their life.
What say you, blogosphere? How important is it to get closure? How probable? And how is it mid-August already?
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