I used to think closure meant answers. The big sit-down talk, the carefully chosen words, the mutual understanding where everything finally makes sense. You say your part, they say theirs, tears are shed, hugs exchanged, and then you walk away lighter. At least, that’s how it looks in movies. There’s always one last scene, one final conversation, one door that closes neatly before another one opens.
But real life isn’t scripted that way. In real life, people disappear mid-sentence. Texts are left on read, calls go unanswered, promises evaporate without ceremony. Sometimes the person you loved, or the friend you thought you knew, just slips out of your life without giving you the dignity of an explanation. And the silence they leave behind is so loud, it hums inside you like static.
We call it ghosting, betrayal, disrespect. But sometimes, I think it’s also closure. Not the kind we asked for, not the kind we rehearsed in our heads, but a quieter, harsher kind. Because silence is an answer. The ignoring is an answer. The absence is an answer. And as much as it hurts, maybe that’s all the closure we’ll ever get.
Still, I chase it. I replay old conversations like evidence in a courtroom, as if one missed clue will suddenly explain why everything collapsed. I write unsent letters, draft texts I’ll never send, imagine confrontations that will never happen. I tell myself that if I could just hear them admit it — just one honest word, one explanation — I’d finally be free. But the truth is, even if they gave me that, it wouldn’t be enough. Because closure was never about them. It was always about me, learning to stop looking for answers in places that only offer silence.
THE MYTH OF CLOSURE
We grow up thinking closure is a door someone else has to lock for us. Movies, books, K-dramas — they all sell us this packaged ending, where the person who hurt you eventually circles back to explain, to apologize, to tie the threads neatly. The fight scene leads to reconciliation. The betrayal gets a confession. Even if the couple doesn’t end up together, there’s usually some soft, lingering moment where they both acknowledge what they had.
But reality is crueler than fiction. People walk out mid-sentence. They leave you mid-arc, right when you thought the story was about to shift into something better. There is no slow fade-out, no soundtrack swelling as they give you the final lines you’ve been rehearsing in your head. Instead, you’re left with a cliffhanger, holding all the unanswered questions like baggage that only you seem to carry.
The myth of closure tells us that if we don’t get their side, we’ll never heal. That if they don’t explain, then somehow our pain isn’t legitimate, or our story isn’t over. But what if the very idea of closure is a trap? What if waiting for them to validate our hurt keeps us chained to them long after they’ve stopped thinking about us? What if closure is not something we are given, but something we create?
THE ENDLESS CHASE
I know this chase too well. It looks like scrolling back through messages at 2 a.m., dissecting every emoji, every pause, every “read at 10:52 p.m.” that never got a reply. It looks like analyzing photos on social media to see who they’re with now, searching for signs of why they left. It looks like unsent drafts — angry paragraphs, tear-stained confessions — sitting in notes apps like ghosts of conversations that will never happen.
The chase pretends to be hope. It makes you feel like you’re doing something, like one more replay of events might unlock the missing piece. But all it really does is stretch the wound. I’ve told myself so many times, “If I could just ask why, then I’d finally be free.” But freedom never comes that way. Because the truth is, even if I got the answer, it wouldn’t erase the hurt. It wouldn’t stitch back the trust. And it certainly wouldn’t change the ending.
What I was really chasing wasn’t closure. It was a rewrite. I wanted them to say the words that would undo the silence, the betrayal, the distance. I wanted them to hand me a different version of the story — one where they didn’t leave, where they chose me, where the connection was enough. But that version doesn’t exist. And every time I went searching for it, I only sank deeper into what already was: the loss.
CLOSURE IN THE SILENCE
It took me years to understand this, and even now, I sometimes struggle to fully accept it: silence is an answer. Just not the one I thought I needed. The unanswered text, the phone left on “seen,” the email never returned—these are all forms of closure. The friend who only reaches out when it suits them, who never checks in when I’m barely holding myself together, gives me closure in the quietest, most unassuming way: by choosing themselves, by not choosing me.
We like to pretend that silence is neutral, that maybe they’re busy, that maybe something came up, that maybe there’s some story we don’t know. We convince ourselves that the absence of words leaves room for hope. But the truth is, silence is never neutral. Silence is deliberate. It speaks. It whispers—or sometimes shouts—the message we’ve been too afraid to hear: “I don’t care enough to respond. This isn’t worth my effort. You are not my priority.”
It is stark, unvarnished, and brutal. It is a kind of honesty we often resist because it hurts too much.
What makes it worse is that closure, when it arrives this way, doesn’t wear a gentle face. It doesn’t say, “I’m sorry,” or “I wish things were different.” It doesn’t cushion the blow or wrap it in sugar. Instead, closure can be cruel. It can be neglect. It can be the way someone simply drifts out of your life without warning, without explanation, without acknowledging the space they once occupied in your heart. That absence—the blank space where a conversation, a text, or even a call should have been—is the full stop at the end of your story with them. And sometimes, it’s louder than any words could ever be.
And yet, we crave words. We crave a narrative that makes sense, that reassures us we’re not imagining our pain, that tells us there was reason, there was thought, there was care. But silence offers none of that. It leaves a vacuum, and in that vacuum, we are forced to confront ourselves. We are forced to reckon with our own expectations, our own desires, our own need for validation from people who have already moved on.
Perhaps the hardest truth is this: closure doesn’t always arrive neatly, in the form of explanations or apologies. Sometimes, it arrives in the most unassuming, almost invisible way possible—through absence, through neglect, through the spaces someone leaves empty in your life. And those silences, as painful as they are, speak more honestly than any conversation could.
Silence is a mirror. It reflects not only the other person’s choice, but your own resilience. It forces you to acknowledge what you cannot change, to accept what was never yours to hold, and to find the strength to keep going despite it. Perhaps closure is less about understanding them and more about understanding yourself—your boundaries, your limits, your capacity to heal.
And maybe, just maybe, that is the truth we resist the most: that closure isn’t always a conversation, a confrontation, or even a resolution. Sometimes it is simply the quiet, unrelenting absence of someone who once mattered. And learning to live with that silence, to honour it, and to move forward anyway—that is its own kind of freedom.
WHY WE CRAVE CLOSURE
I think part of the reason we crave closure so desperately is because it gives us the illusion of control. When someone leaves without explanation, it feels like chaos — like the rug has been pulled from under us. If they would just say why, then at least the pain would have shape. At least we could point to something concrete and say, “That’s what broke us.”
But the truth is, no answer ever feels enough. If they say, “It wasn’t you, it was me,” we roll our eyes at the cliché. If they say, “I just didn’t feel the same anymore,” the honesty slices us open. If they confess to betrayal, the truth curdles into anger. No matter what they say, we’re still left with the same thing: the loss.
And yet, our minds cling to the idea that words could heal us, as if language itself could undo absence.
Psychologists say closure helps the brain make sense of loss, to file it neatly so we can move on. But people are not files. They are not projects we can close with a final signature. They are entire worlds we built in our heads, entire futures we imagined, entire versions of ourselves we only became because of them. And when that vanishes, we aren’t just grieving the person — we’re grieving the version of ourselves we were with them. Closure can’t erase that. Closure can’t give that back.
And yet, I crave it. I crave it because I want the hurt to make sense. I want to believe that if I just had the right words, the right explanation, I could tuck it all away and never ache again. But maybe the ache is part of it. Maybe the lack of answers is the answer itself.
REDEFINING CLOSURE
So maybe closure isn’t a gift someone else hands us. Maybe it’s something we carve out for ourselves in the wreckage they left behind. Maybe closure is the night you finally delete the messages, not because you got what you wanted from them, but because you know you’ll never get it. Maybe it’s blocking their number, not to punish them, but to stop punishing yourself with the hope that they’ll suddenly reach out.
Maybe closure is realizing you don’t need their confession to validate your pain. What they did — or didn’t do — already says enough. Their silence is an answer. Their absence is an answer. And your healing cannot wait on someone who has already chosen not to show up.
I used to think closure was a two-person act. But now I think it’s a decision. It’s the moment you say: “I will not let the lack of an explanation chain me to this hurt any longer.” It’s not neat. It doesn’t always feel satisfying. But it is powerful. Because in choosing to create closure for yourself, you take back the control you were waiting for someone else to give you.
Maybe that’s what growth looks like: not waiting for them to return and explain but learning to be okay with never knowing why.
THE EXHAUSTION OF HOLDING ON
The thing about waiting for closure is that it’s exhausting. It keeps you tethered to someone who has already walked away. It’s like standing in an empty room long after everyone else has left, hoping the echoes will turn back into voices.
I’ve done this to myself more times than I can count. Held on to the hope of “one last talk,” “one last chance,” “one last explanation.” And in the process, I’ve kept myself from moving forward. I’ve stayed stuck in a chapter that was already over, rereading the same lines, searching for meaning in sentences that never meant what I thought they did.
It’s exhausting because hope is heavy. Carrying unanswered questions is heavy. Waking up every day thinking, “Maybe today they’ll finally say something” is heavy. And eventually, the weight doesn’t just crush the relationship — it crushes you.
There’s a peculiar kind of freedom in finally admitting they’re not coming back, the conversation will never happen, the apology will never arrive. It’s devastating, yes. But it’s also release. Because holding on hurts more than letting go. And sometimes, choosing to set the weight down is the only way to stand up again.
THANK U, NEXT
So here’s what I’ve come to believe: closure isn’t something they owe us. It’s something we give ourselves.
Sometimes closure is ugly, unsatisfying, abrupt. Sometimes it’s silence, sometimes it’s disrespect, sometimes it’s the harsh truth that they never cared as much as we did. But in the end, closure is not about them. It’s about us deciding to stop waiting for an ending that will never come.
It’s about saying: thank you for showing me who you are.
Thank you for teaching me what I will no longer accept.
Thank you for the lessons I didn’t want but probably needed.
And then, next.
Thank you, next.
Because life doesn’t pause until we get the apology, the explanation, the neat little bow on the story. Life moves forward, with or without closure. And maybe the bravest thing we can do is choose to move with it.
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