"What if the closure we're waiting for is the very thing keeping us stuck?"
What if the healing we crave isn't behind a conversation, but beyond our expectation of one?
I used to believe closure was something someone handed to you, like a returned item. A "sorry," a confession, a final talk over coffee that wraps pain in a bow and lets you move on, like a scene from a movie.
I also believed it could be an apology. An admission of guilt. Something wrapped in honesty and handed over with grace. I thought healing came when the person who broke you finally said the words you needed to hear.
Until I learned the most painful, liberating truth of all:
Sometimes, the apology never comes.
And even harder than that? Sometimes it's not coming because they don't even know they hurt you. Or worse, they do, and simply don't care.
More heartbreaking still? Sometimes, it does come... and it doesn't matter... It changes nothing.
It happened years ago. A friendship that had grown roots, watered with shared secrets, laughter that curled into the night, and silence that didn't need filling. We were close. The kind of close that made you forget people weren't blood, or that they could still walk away.
But she did.
No fight. No fallout.
Just slow, excruciating silence and cold distance.
The kind that makes you question if the warmth you remember was ever even real.
I kept replaying everything. Scanning texts. Recalling conversations. Looking for a fault line, anything I said or did wrong. I was convinced if I could just figure out why, I could fix it. Or at least forgive it.
But days turned into weeks. Weeks into months.
And nothing came. No explanation. No message.
Just digital dust and absence echoing through my chest.
It wasn't the loss that hurt the most.
It was the abandonment without acknowledgment.
The void where an apology should have lived.
For a long time, I carried that weight like a stone in my pocket. It was heavy, unseen, and always there.
Until one day, it hit me.
I realised I was waiting for a ghost to knock on a door they no longer remembered.
The hardest part? I found out she was fine.
She was laughing, Living and Thriving.
She had clearly moved on from what I thought was a relationship.
That was my wake-up call.
What if healing was never about them?
What if closure wasn't something given, but claimed?
So I wrote the apology I never received.
Not to send it.
Not to shame her.
But to release myself.
I wrote:
"I don't know what you're going through, or what you've been through. But I forgive you—for disappearing without explanation. For making me question my worth. For being the kind of friend who taught me that some goodbyes don't come with a warning. I forgive you, not because you asked for it, but because I need to be free from you."
And just like that, I let go.
Not because it didn't matter.
But because it no longer controlled me.
Here's my letter to you:
Dear reader,
If you're reading this and it feels a little too familiar, I want you to know, you're not weak for wanting closure. You're human. And being human means we long for resolution, for endings that make sense, for stories that feel complete.
But life isn't a perfect script. Some people exit mid-sentence. Some chapters close without punctuation.
So if you're holding onto a pain shaped like a question mark, waiting for clarity, for justice, for words that may never come, consider this your permission to stop waiting. To choose healing even when it's silent. To choose forward even when it's lonely.
Your healing doesn't depend on their remorse.
Your peace doesn't require their presence.
You are allowed to move on without closure.
You are allowed to move on because you deserve peace.
Let this be the chapter you stopped waiting... and started living.