I used to think closure meant answers.
Like if I could just understand why it happened…
If I could just hear the right explanation…
If she could say the right thing in the right way…
Then I’d finally be okay.
I remember being absolutely wrecked. Heartbroken in that quiet, heavy way where everything feels slower. And I had so many questions. The kind that don’t let you sleep.
I couldn’t wrap my head around how someone who was sleeping next to me every night, loving on me, telling me everything was fine… was cheating on me behind my back. My brain just wouldn’t accept it. So I kept digging. Asking. Replaying conversations. Looking for logic where there wasn’t any.
And if I’m being honest, I spent months stuck there.
Months thinking, If I just understand her reasoning, this will hurt less.
But it didn’t.
Every answer she gave didn’t bring peace it just opened another door in my mind. Another loophole. Another thing to overthink. Another image I didn’t want. Another version of the story to argue with myself about at 2 a.m.
At some point, I realized something that hurt in a different way:
This isn’t helping me anymore.
So I stopped asking questions.
I stopped talking to her.
I stopped chasing clarity from someone who had already shown me who they were.
And instead, I did the thing I didn’t want to do.
I sat with it.
I accepted what I knew she did.
I accepted that there were things I’d never fully know — and that some of them were probably worse than I imagined.
I accepted that no explanation was going to make it make sense.
And that’s when it finally started to loosen its grip.
Not because I understood it.
But because I stopped fighting reality.
Here’s the part people get wrong about “letting go,” though and I really want to be clear about this.
Letting go doesn’t mean suppressing it.
It doesn’t mean shoving it down and pretending you’re fine.
It doesn’t mean distracting yourself until you’re numb.
Real closure is sitting there with the ugly feelings.
The anger.
The sadness.
The confusion.
The grief of who you thought they were.
It’s realizing you don’t need to understand why she did it.
You just need to accept that she did.
And after you feel it really feel it that’s when you release it.
Not because it didn’t matter.
But because you matter more.
I didn’t get closure from her answers.
I gave myself closure through acceptance.
And that’s the part no one tells you:
You’re not going to find peace in someone else’s explanations.
You find it when you stop needing them
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: semen zhuravlev On Unsplash
