The Myth of Closure

February 2, 2022

With years, I've come to realize that closure is a rare thing.

Really, we live in this state of solitude where we don't understand the choices other people make and they don't owe us an explanation, nor do we owe them one.

 There's no bow tie and things and things don't get wrapped up in a mutual understanding.

So, in my 20's, I began to think, I hope they become better people. I hope they evolve and don't continue cycles of trauma that their younger selves dolled out.  

I think that line of thinking too, has evolved. 

People are a product of all of their inputs, in often unequal and unpredictable ways. The early inputs and the inputs of trauma far outweigh anything else.

When they leave us, the myth says, they grow from their time with us, and they become a better, though flawed version of themselves to the next people in their lives. 

But, I don't know that that's true either because the real work comes from internal motivation and an internal reflection, to be more and to be better and to make oneself vulnerable enough to seek resources.

We live in a world where people are defensive because they are hurt, and those defenses hold strong whether we are there or we are not. The only way to shift is to get to the roots that become more and more covered and protected through the years...

through therapy and through having hard conversations.

But most of us just leave our blueprint, good and bad, on people until we die even as the idealism in us believes in the potential of human goodness and humanity.

I believe none of us are completely good and none of us are completely evil. We're all hypocritical contradictions. We all live in a mush of nuance and pain compounded by all these social systems: race, class, sexism, gender discrimination etc so one of us can gain control through manipulation, conscious or unconscious, to make ourselves feel better, that is what we choose to do.

And the unlearning of that is years, if it does happen.

 For me now, it's a matter of being at peace with things taking its course and with wishing others the best, knowing that only they and their world can define it. 

 I live on the corner of hope and pragmatism, knowing one needs another, just as humans need one another to move about this world, whether or not it creates an imprint or an impact. 

---

Seasons

They say

People are seasons

Yet I let you orbit around

My sun

 

Keeping warm as I shine my light on your dark spots

Your hard spots.

 

Rigged.

Hidden.

 

I kept returning with the lighter to unthaw you

Though the ice caps kept you safe

So you would always freeze up again

 

Afraid to drown in the warmth of your own coursing blood

 

Keeping distance from a star that burned

 

Unabashed, defiant

For you

 

Beautiful, bright, brilliant man

Preserved by winter