On a lack of closure being closure in itself
You think you require closure from the people who harmed you, but do you realize that it serves their abusive narrative?
I’ve lost a lot of memories over the years, my brain cropping them down into thumbnails on a timeline. Some may say that in order to heal, I should recover those memories as another way to approach the pursuit of closure.
Let me tell you why both of these strategies were wrong for me: I’m never going to get closure from my parents or ex spouses, and it’s best for me to instead take my closure in the knowledge that their denial of same tells me everything I need to know abuse the abuse I suffered: it was intentional. Figuring out why has helped me immensely, but I don’t think reliving the individual traumas brings any more benefits to my healing.
What I mean by that is that in understanding psychology and generational family trauma as I know it, I finally understand that there was nothing else I could have done but save myself. My options were either to choose narcissism to survive like the men in the family or continue to be the scapegoat. So if those were my only possible roles, it was a lot easier to just write off the whole damn dynamic and walk away.
Closure is easier when you can internalize that being born into a toxic system isn’t your fault, and actually, the most important lesson we can learn from this it that we owe it to the next generation to not pass along our family trauma. Our closure is in breaking the cycle.
It sucks that we have to atone for the actions of others. I bitch about having to do it within my community all the time, for instance, so it’s not just interpersonal.
