A blog by Elena Overfield, Formerly Pepetoe

I bloody love closure. Unfortunately, closure doesn’t seem particularly interested in me. I want explanations. I want timelines. I want to understand exactly what happened, why it happened, when it changed, what somebody was thinking, whether they regret it, whether they understand my perspective and whether the version of events living inside their head resembles mine. I want the conversation.

You know the one.

The final, beautifully mature conversation where both people sit down and say everything they’ve been holding inside. They listen. They understand. Someone apologises. Maybe both people apologise. Everything finally makes sense. We hug. The credits roll. I can finally move on.

Except… real life rarely fucking works like that, and one of the hardest lessons I’ve learnt this year is that sometimes closure isn’t something somebody gives you. Sometimes it’s something you decide.

I have always needed to understand

I think this is connected to a much bigger part of who I am: I analyse everything. If something hurts me, I want to know why. If somebody changes, I want to know what caused it. If something ends unexpectedly, my brain becomes a detective. What did I miss? When did it start? Was there a sign? What did that message mean? Were they already feeling differently then? Did I cause this? Could I have prevented it?

There is something comforting about believing every painful event has an explanation because explanations create the illusion of control. If I can understand exactly why something happened, perhaps I can make sure it never happens again. If I can identify the precise mistake, perhaps I can avoid repeating it. If I can get somebody to explain why they hurt me, perhaps the pain will finally make sense. But sometimes there isn’t an answer capable of making something hurt less, and sometimes knowing why changes absolutely nothing.

I think closure became another way of trying to control abandonment

When somebody leaves and you don’t understand why, you’re left with uncertainty, and this has always terrified me. My brain fills gaps, usually with the worst possible explanation. If I don’t know why someone is distant, “they don’t want me.” If I don’t know why a friendship changed “I did something wrong.” If I don’t understand why somebody left, “I wasn’t enough.”

So, of course I’ve chased closure. Closure promises certainty. It promises that somebody will finally fill in the blank space my anxiety has been terrorising me with. However, I’ve started realising something. Sometimes there isn’t one definitive version of what happened. Two people can experience the same relationship completely differently. Two people can leave the same argument believing entirely different things. Someone can genuinely believe they did nothing wrong while I genuinely believe they hurt me, and there isn’t always going to be some omniscient referee who appears and announces, “right, here’s what actually happened.”

Sometimes I have to live with the discomfort of knowing that my experience is real even when somebody else doesn’t validate it.

Not everybody is going to understand me

God, this has been hard to accept. I want people to understand my intentions. If somebody thinks badly of me, I want to explain. If there’s been a misunderstanding, I want to correct it. If somebody has heard one version of a story, I want them to hear mine.

Why? I think it’s because somewhere inside me there’s still this belief that if everybody just had all the information, surely they’d understand, surely they’d realise I’m not horrible, surely we’d all be okay.

I’m learning that sometimes people will know my side and still disagree with me. Sometimes they’ll hear my explanation and not accept it. Sometimes somebody will have a version of me living inside their head that I don’t recognise, and I cannot spend my life chasing people around trying to edit their perception of me. I don’t need to attend every trial I’m invited to. Somebody is even allowed to think I’m the villian in their story.

I don’t need to attend every trial I’m invited to.Somebody is allowed to misunderstand me.Somebody is allowed to dislike me.

I know there are situations in my own past where somebody else would tell the story very differently from me – that’s uncomfortable. But adulthood seems to involve accepting that I don’t get editorial control over everybody else’s memories.

Sometimes there isn’t going to be an apology

This one also hurts, because when somebody hurts us, we want acknowledgement – not necessarily revenge.

Sometimes we just want,“I know what I did. I understand why it hurt you. I’m sorry.” Those words can mean so much, but sometimes they’re never-coming.

“I know what I did. I understand why it hurt you. I’m sorry.”

Sometimes the other person doesn’t think they did anything wrong. Sometimes they know they did but aren’t capable of admitting it. Sometimes they apologise but the apology isn’t what we hoped for. Sometimes they say sorry and somehow it still doesn’t fix anything.

I used to think moving on required that moment. Now I’m learning that it doesn’t, because otherwise I’m handing somebody else an extraordinary amount of power. I’m essentially saying: I cannot heal until you participate in my healing. And what happens if they never do? Do I just stay there forever?

An apology isn’t always closure anyway

I’ve had conversations I’ve desperately wanted and walked away feeling worse, because sometimes you get the answer and immediately discover another question underneath it. When you ask someone, “why did you do that?” They answer. Cool. Then you go “but why didn’t you tell me?” They answer. Then you say, “but if you felt that way, why did you do this?”

Suddenly, we’re six levels deep into an archaeological excavation of a relationship that has already ended, like we’re a fucking dinosaur fossil. At some point, understanding becomes rumination. At some point, searching for closure becomes refusing to accept that the thing is already closed. I know that am particularly good at that.

I can analyse something until I’ve extracted every possible interpretation and then somehow convince myself there’s still one missing piece which, if discovered, will finally make me feel okay. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe sometimes it hurt because it hurt. Maybe somebody disappointed me because humans disappoint each other. Maybe a relationship ended because it wasn’t working. Maybe I don’t need another twelve hours of analysis.\

Understanding someone doesn’t mean I have to let them back in

This has been another enormous lesson. I am very good at understanding why people behave the way they do. Maybe too good. I can take behaviour that hurt me and immediately start constructing the defence. They’re struggling. They’ve had a difficult year. That’s how they deal with conflict. They’ve got their own trauma.

That’s how they deal with conflict.They didn’t mean it.

While all of those things might be true, understanding the reason somebody hurt me doesn’t magically remove the hurt. Empathy does not require access. I can understand somebody, forgive somebody, and genuinely wish them well. And I can still decide: You don’t get to be close to me anymore.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are different things. Forgiveness can happen entirely on my side. Reconciliation requires trust, change, two people, and what I’ve learnt is that I am allowed to decide that I don’t want it.

Sometimes closure is accepting that I’ll never know

This is perhaps the hardest version of closure for someone like me. There are questions I might never have answered, things that happened years ago that I will probably never fully understand, people whose motivations I can only guess at, friendships where I don’t know exactly what changed, people who may never tell me what they really thought, and situations where I’ll never know whether my interpretation was completely right.

Maybe peace doesn’t come from finally solving every mystery. Maybe it comes from being able to say, “I don’t know, and I can live without knowing.”

That sentence terrifies the part of me that believes knowledge equals safety, but it’s also incredibly freeing, because I cannot spend the rest of my life investigating the past.

Closure can simply be a decision

Maybe closure looks much less cinematic than I imagined. Maybe it’s deleting the paragraph you were going to send. Maybe it’s stopping yourself from checking whether they watched your story. Maybe it’s not asking the mutual friend what they said about you. Maybe it’s realising you’ve already explained yourself enough. Maybe it’s deciding you don’t need to win the argument retrospectively. Maybe it’s putting your phone down. Maybe it’s accepting that the final conversation already happened, even though you didn’t realise it was final at the time.

Maybe it’s saying, “I know enough”. Not everything, but enough. I know how the relationship made me feel. I know what happened from my perspective. I know what I regret. I know what I’d do differently. I know what I won’t tolerate again. I know what I’ve learnt.

Maybe that’s all the information I actually need.

Sometimes I have to accept that I was the person who caused the hurt

This lesson also works in the opposite direction. There are people I’ve hurt. There are situations I wish I could rewrite. Part of wanting closure can sometimes be wanting somebody else to release us from our guilt. We apologise. We explain. We show that we’ve changed. And secretly, perhaps we’re hoping they’ll eventually say, “it’s okay. I forgive you. You’re not a bad person.” But nobody actually owes us that.

“It’s okay. I forgive you. You’re not a bad person.”

This has been incredibly difficult for me to learn. I can take accountability. I can apologise sincerely. I can change my behaviour. But, and here’s the big one, I cannot demand forgiveness because I need it to feel better about myself.

Sometimes their closure might require a life that doesn’t include me, and respecting that is part of accountability too. I have to find a way to forgive myself without making the person I hurt responsible for doing it for me.

Not every door needs to be slammed

I’m also learning that endings don’t have to be dramatic to be real. Not every relationship requires one final explosive argument. Sometimes a door closes quietly. Contact becomes less frequent. You stop reaching out. You realise you don’t miss the relationship as much as you expected. You stop feeling the need to explain yourself. And eventually you notice that you’ve already moved on.

There is something peaceful about that. No revenge. No grand speech. No need to make somebody regret losing you. Just acceptance. Kind of like, “This was part of my life. Now it isn’t.“

Now it isn’t.

Maybe the full stop belongs to me

I’ve spent so much time thinking closure was something waiting at the end of a conversation. Something somebody else had to hand me: an explanation, an apology, permission to move forward. I’m starting to think I had it backwards.

Sometimes closure is simply reaching the point where I don’t need anything else from that person. Not because everything makes sense. Not because everything has been forgiven. Not because what happened suddenly doesn’t matter. But because I’ve decided it doesn’t get any more of me.

No more analysis. No more imaginary conversations. No more trying to make someone understand. No more rehearsing what I’d say if I saw them. No more waiting for the apology. No more believing one final piece of information is going to magically make the past feel different.

There are things I will never understand. There are people who will never understand me. There are apologies I’ll never receive. There are apologies I’ve made that may never be accepted. There are relationships that ended without the beautiful final conversation I thought I needed. You know what? I’m beginning to be okay with that.

Perhaps closure isn’t finally hearing the words I’ve been waiting for. Maybe closure is reaching the point where I realise I don’t need to hear them anymore. The door doesn’t need somebody standing on the other side agreeing that it should be closed. Sometimes I can simply close it… and walk away.