Of closure and other myths

Or, how getting my shit together starts with unlearning all the sad girl ideas the internet fed me

Therapy has done wonders for me. I’m lucky that my therapist is someone I can actually converse with, and I appreciate that she lets me process my thoughts out loud, asking questions that allow me to lead to my answer instead plucking out the answers for me.

I know I’m privileged to have been able to go to therapy for as long as I needed to, especially because I know that therapy is expensive and not something everyone can get access to. So, I’m sharing here some of answers and lessons I have gained and thought about during my years in therapy, just in case anyone reading needs it.

Love doesn’t just happen

Love is a faith, a verb, and a conversation.

And for a relationship rooted in love to thrive, love must exist in all three forms.

These all connect, in a way. Loving someone means that you have faith in them — that they will do the right thing, that they will treat you how you should be treated — and this faith only comes when actions are taken to nurture that faith. And those actions? They come from honest conversations we have that help us align on important things like values we hold dear or the direction we want to take.

Love cannot thrive without faith. And even the greatest faith can diminish when there is silence and inaction.

This just doesn’t apply to our relationships with other people. This applies — more importantly, I think — to our relationship with our own self.

Many times when we think of love and relationships we think of our relationships with other people, oftentimes forgetting that our relationship with ourself determines what kind of relationship we have with other people.

And one of the very hard-won lessons and hard-fought realisations I had was that if I loved myself the way I should be loved, I would’t have settled for anything less from everyone else.

Seeking closure may be more detrimental than helpful to your healing process

At least, in the form that most people think closure takes.

Think about it: what does closure usually mean for most people? What is the idea of closure that you have in your head?

I hear so many people saying that getting to talk to someone else, getting that someone else to acknowledge things or recognise their faults (and many other things) will provide them with the much needed closure and validation to move forward with their lives.

The thing with the idea of closure in the context of healing is that you are essentially placing your healing at the hands of other people.

Healing is your responsibility to yourself. And when you decide to put in the work of healing yourself, one of the very first things you should consider is the very likely possibility that the people who hurt you will not be able to or will not want to take part in healing you.

You have to understand that the people who hurt you do not and may not believe that they did so, no matter how many discussions you have with them. So seeking “closure” by having these conversations may actually have the opposite effect than what you desire.

Whether it be a parent, a friend, or a lover, one can never predict how they will act when you pass on to them the responsibility of helping you fix what they helped broke. The better move would be is to never expect it. Do the work of healing yourself without the need for other’s participation. If they do participate, welcome it as a bonus.

But also: they may have broken you, but remember that you are not a thing — you are capable of putting yourself back together.

I know it’s easier said than done, but the earlier you accept that, the faster you can try to move forward to healing yourself.

The only person you have to forgive is you

Everyone else can just go fuck themselves.

And no, I’m not being harsh.

I was in therapy for CPTSD. The first year, I was angry all the time. I was angry at another person, yes. But I have come to realise that a larger portion of my anger is directed at myself. After all, how dare I let another person treat me that way?

I thought I needed to forgive that person to be able to move on. But my whole being was rebelling at the thought of granting that person forgiveness and I struggled a lot with it. Then my therapist dropped this question:

Why?

Why, indeed. Why do I need to forgive someone who caused me so much suffering and almost derailed my life? Why do I need to insist that I forgive this person who isn’t even seeking for it?

I pondered over it and came to the realisation that I can live happily, freely, and with no regrets even if I don’t forgive that person. But I can’t do so without forgiving myself.

Because in my healing process, what I think about myself is more important. My anger at another person is irrelevant. My anger with myself is what’s holding me back. My anger with myself prevents me from fully loving myself, and therefore snowballs into my relationship with others.

So, yeah. I can’t be bothered to forgive someone who will never be a part of my life anyway. But I spent so much time working on forgiving the most important person in my life — myself.

Your feelings are valid, but it doesn’t mean they’re always right

We cannot dictate how we feel about things. We feel how we feel, no matter how wrong or right those feelings might be. That’s why I said that our feelings are valid — we are entitled to it.

What we are not entitled to, however, is for everyone to cater to those feelings. Because while those feelings might be valid, but they are not more valid than other people’s. While those feelings might be valid, that doesn’t mean we are entitled to act on them in all situations.

We don’t live in a silo. We are part of a community. And being part of communities mean that we help each other out for the health of the community. No one person is more important all the time.

It’s not other people’s job to fix you.

We’re all going through life with different degrees of difficulty. This is not a contest, and it’s not on us to decide who is dealing with more difficult things and therefore whose feelings should be taken into account much more than everyone else’s.

One of the things I struggled with during therapy is identifying and acknowledging my feelings, and then learning to let it go. Because we don’t always have to do anything about our feelings more than feel. And oftentimes, it’s better that way.

PS: It’s been years since my last post. I’ve only been recently inspired to start writing again. I hope you’re all still with me in this journey.

Still chasing,