Closure

I left Washington DC yesterday with lots on my mind.  I found myself doing the same thing that morning that I was doing six months earlier at the turn of the New Year: sitting on the stoop at my friend’s apartment with my phone in hand listening to some music I’d worked on when I had a free minute.  I don’t create stuff often and these days its more or less when I have something to write about.  The six months in between January and July 2 have been interesting.  A lot has gone on in from my mother having surgery, the blog taking off, establishing and the ending of connections and such.  At the halfway point of the year, I found myself thinking about two things: who I was conversing with six months while heading home and closure.

People want closure on their terms.  If its a relationship we want a big moment of debriefing so that we can move on knowing where we went wrong, and that big aha moment where we can walk away knowing where you and that other person stand.  Many times people wait around waiting for it hoping one day that conversation comes along, wind up never ending that chapter, and bringing that baggage into the next relationship.  More than likely, that conversation is never coming.  When it does, its almost never good because one person walks away with feelings conjured back up.  I’m not saying that looking for this is a bad thing.  Everyone wants to know what someone they care about thinks of them and what they can do differently to avoid things ending similarly (Chances are its a similar pattern of relationships with the same kinds of people).

I think the only thing flawed about this wanting closure is allowing your fate to be in someone else’s hands.  I’m a firm believer in making your own closure.  It is up to yourself whether or not you bring open wounds into new circumstances.  Yes, some wounds are harder to heal and may take the right person coming along to right a few wrongs.  But as much as possible, make your own closure.  For a long time, my coping mechanism was to keep moving on like things never happened.  It wasn’t me acting in denial, I used my flaw of thinking about several things at once as a strength and would keep busy with all the other things on my mind.  Not the best practice because while on a day to day basis I was alright but I didn’t wind up actually dealing with whatever was in the back of my mind.

Even now, its a hard habit to break.  When Timile passed away, the first thought in my mind was about doing whatever I had to do to get Cydney back.  Eventually, I dealt with it.  When Timile was diagnosed, I knew there was a good chance that she wouldn’t survive her fight with cancer.  Eventually things got worse and worse and the idea of it being just Cydney and I seemed more real.  When the day came, I wasn’t devastated because I had prepared myself for it.  Was it the hardest day of my life? Yes.  But I spent most of it being there for friends and family who took it hard.

There is no one way to make your own closure.  Everyone is different.  If your goal is to find peace and understanding, you will find a way to it.  The best way to do so is to be aware of your flaws.  Personally, I analyze everything.  When things go awry, I obsess over minor details and can’t think about anything but what did I miss.  Not wanting to deal with a counterproductive flaw became my motivation.  I look at a situation or person and I run the gamut of possibilities that can happen.  Looking at their patterns of behavior or how they react to certain questions, I make predictions and narrow things down by probability.  They usually wind up being correct.  I prepare myself for just about everything.  When things don’t turn out as I plan, I just tell myself “It’s not for me to understand right now.”  Of course parts of me want to break down every facet and interaction with people.  When I do, I just tell myself that same quote until it becomes habit.

How does all of this tie into where I was six months ago, who I was conversing with, and what I was listening to?  Well, I wrote a song a week or two after in leaving January that predicted exactly how things would turn out: “It ain’t hard to tell, the exception’s the norm.  Because you make it all the time, and you follow form.  All you can do is brace yourself because the forecast says here comes the storm.”