What does Closure mean?

[Roland]

What ISN'T closure?

I think about when my ex broke up with me over text and blocked me.

I think about when I had a friend do similar. Something I said over text pissed her off and she said we couldn't be friends anymore and blocked me.

I think of when I told my kindergarten class "I'll see you tomorrow" and was fired after the end of the school day.

I don't think of closure in the broader scope of healing but a step that aids in healing.

I think of it as unfinished business, things you don't get to say or discuss before it's too late.

 

[Rose White]

Interesting how everyone has different ideas of closure.

My grandma was, like me, also sexually assaulted as a child, but it was by employees of her father’s. She didn’t tell her parents. When she was an older teenager her cousin told the family and her dad’s response was, “If I had known I would have killed them!” She remembers there was a lot of anger from the family when it came out.

That upset her because what she wanted was them to enfold her in care, to hold her and grieve her loss. She never got that and it hurt her. She was a very manipulative person all her life, because people find ways to get their emotional needs met.

In my mind, I sometimes get spells of wanting to kill my dad who csa’d me. And I think it’s like I’m taking on the role of the village vigilantes. I’ve heard it said that pedophiles get killed in prison and many people hold pedophilia on the same level as pre-meditated murder. When my mom found out she said she wanted to put it on billboards what my dad did.

But there’s no community stoning of child rapists. And even if they get convicted, the court system is cold, dispassionate, and retraumatizing.

So personally for me I think closure would come if there was community violence against sexual predators like my dad. But that can’t happen because communities don’t even exist in Western culture anymore with few exceptions. We are all just individuals coping through self-care and self-forgiveness and self-acceptance. There is no community-care, community-grief, community-rage. Westerners are numbed and isolated and overwhelmed which makes closure difficult at best.

 

[Lost in the Woods]

That is why I asked the question. First to stimulate thought and then to hear what everyone thought.

 

[anthony]

Is there really an endpoint as the word closure implies?

I've come to accept that closure with PTSD really just means, maybe you've dealt with it, maybe you haven't, but time will sure tell. PTSD loves to drag up the past and throw it at us in the future when something retraumatises us. How little or much that occurs, tends to help me whether something is closed or not, and its just PTSD trying to drag me down again.

 

[Friday]

I hear the word closure used a lot but I am not sure I understand the idea.

Done.

Univested.

Uninterested.

Uninvolved.

Personally? I think the CULTURAL aspect of “closure” (as in something needed) is total BS. A desireable thing? Certainly. Usually. Hell f*cking no. But a necessary thing? Pfft. Not hardly. Only to those with no self reliance, self confidence, self respect, sense of self, accountability, spine, chutzpah; by placing the responsibility of “closure” on the other person doing the “perfect” thing for WE/US to move on with our own lives. Or, conversely, placing the onus on anyone else for WE/US to move on.

So your rapist NEEDS your “forgiveness” for “closure”? f*ck them.
Your ex “needs” you to XYZ to justify your leaving them? f*ck them.
You “need” an explanation, that suits your personality, to leave a relationship for “closure”?
f*ck us.

Closure is a gift, not an obligation, much less a requisite/prerequisite.
And not always a gift you want. More a poison chalice.

The thing, most PERFECTLY suited? Is also not always a good thing. Do you really NEED your abusive spouse to KILL your child, to leave them? Because that would provide closure? Or could you still leave, with feelings galore, to save your child? “Closure”? Personally? f*ck that noise. Do what’s right. Be secure in THAT. The absolute end/finis…. Says you’re f*cking stupid, and weak, and incapable of even the most basic of human strength, IMO/IME. Because someone else has to end things FOR you. Rather than being able to end things, for yourself.

Someone GIVING you closure? Seriously, f*ck it. It’s cultural marshmallowness, IME/IMO. Someone ELSE has to justify? Instead of my own choice/witness/account/accord? Bite me. I CHOOSE. FINIS. Someone else sanctifying? Is nothing more than victimish nonsense.

 

[Lost in the Woods]

Done.

Univested.

Uninterested.

Uninvolved.

Personally? I think the CULTURAL aspect of “closure” (as in something needed) is total BS. A desireable thing? Certainly. Usually. Hell f*cking no. But a necessary thing? Pfft. Not hardly. Only to those with no self reliance, self confidence, self respect, sense of self, accountability, spine, chutzpah; by placing the responsibility of “closure” on the other person doing the “perfect” thing for WE/US to move on with our own lives. Or, conversely, placing the onus on anyone else for WE/US to move on.

So your rapist NEEDS your “forgiveness” for “closure”? f*ck them.
Your ex “needs” you to XYZ to justify your leaving them? f*ck them.
You “need” an explanation, that suits your personality, to leave a relationship for “closure”?
f*ck us.

Closure is a gift, not an obligation, much less a requisite/prerequisite.
And not always a gift you want. More a poison chalice.

The thing, most PERFECTLY suited? Is also not always a good thing. Do you really NEED your abusive spouse to KILL your child, to leave them? Because that would provide closure? Or could you still leave, with feelings galore, to save your child? “Closure”? Personally? f*ck that noise. Do what’s right. Be secure in THAT.

Love it. Now tell us what you really think.

 

[Friday]

Love it. Now tell us what you really think.

Always do, if I’m asked.

Opinions are like assholes; asked mine? I’ll share mine. If I give a f*ck.

 

[Lost in the Woods]

Always do, if I’m asked.

Opinions are like assholes; asked mine? I’ll share mine. If I give a f*ck.

That was my problem practicing law, I tended to say what I was thinking. I am sure you are as familiar as I am how that often ends.

 

[anthony]

Yer, I have that problem. Don't ask me if you don't want my no holds barr, as I see it, version. Problem is, I had to shift to a no BS, honest as within reasonable approach, for my own sanity. I can't be politically correct for the sake of others when it smacks the shit out of my own sanity.

 

[enough]

the word implies a mechanical solid binary state of being closed and no longer open which rarely exists in affairs of heart or mind, in all things human really. Doctor's talk of remission not closure, we are basically open from birth to death.
close as it gets for me is maybe “settled”. Maybe if the last two hundred and thirty eight times i have remembered a trauma my thoughts have led me to the same thoughts as i exited that trauma memory tunnel, it has settled. Because i finally solved the big questions of blame and best strategies for future avoidance and how to blend the trauma into my persona and self concept, all of it, all explored and mapped out. OR I just plain decided it was awful and there are no answers and i am supposed to feel the anger and revulsion but not constantly for the rest of my life because settled isnt ever going to happen so find something else to think about ASAP.
So, there is no closure, memories are just shook out and settled or given up on and assigned to the out of mind out of sight bin or some other mix of those two elements somewhere along the path to settled or on the way to the conclusion that it can never be settled. Lots of states these trauma memories are in, none so easily described as “no longer open”.
For me, these traumas are no more closed than the medical records file folder at my doctors office that will someday go to the shredder. open/over. thats the only binary i see.

 

[Lost in the Woods]

It is like we keep revisiting the trauma like somehow it is going to change or go away. It doesn’t but maybe over time our reaction can.