Brief Thoughts on Closure
in which I share my thoughts on Pete Davidson, Esther Perel, and the fallacy of forever
I.
While waiting for the M train last night, I listened to a podcast about “the dissolution of a 25 year marriage.” At least, that’s what the wife kept repeating; the husband was clearly bored out of his mind. Esther Perel, the mysterious Belgian psychotherapist mediating the conversation, asked the husband how he felt when he listened to his wife’s impassioned cries. How did he feel when she begged him to remember the night he bought her a neon sign that read “I promise to love you”? How did he feel when she she insisted that all she ever wanted was for them to be “trees next to each other, and not entangled and choking each other”? Was he so far gone that all he heard from her mouth was blah blah blah blah blah blah blah? (The answer to that one was fairly obvious.)
Although I have never been in a relationship, I’m afraid of that time period during which your partner has clocked out, but is still going through the motions. During which you’re sort of played for a fool. This has partially been on my mind because multiple men with girlfriends have hit on me lately, and I’ve realized with slow shock that there’s nothing preventing them from doing so. There is nothing lodged in their throats that will prevent them from saying what they aren’t supposed to, no air bubble that prevents certain requests from floating out. Just because they know that they’re in a relationship, and their partner knows that they’re in a relationship, and the online world knows that they’re in a relationship, and the in-person world knows that they’re in a relationship, doesn’t mean that they cannot stray.
II.
Sometimes closure is so nebulous that it is disguised, even to yourself, as a pause. I have been micro dosing closure for months—from employers who have interviewed me and dropped off the map, from family members who have transformed into unrecognizable life forms, from New York City apartments that I have moved out of or into abruptly, from friends that I genuinely thought, in that plastic friendship bracelet sort of way, would be forever.
III.
Around this time last year, it became clear that the class of 2020 wouldn’t have a graduation. It wasn’t a matter of postponement, of weathering a few weeks of chaos to reach the beaches of normalcy. The emails were wrong, as were the administrators who sent them. In any case, I dismissed the sympathy that followed the announcements. When venturing outside was a matter of life or death, politicians chose global capitalism over human life daily, and random idiots were drinking bleach, losing my last semester seemed irrelevant. It seemed like good problem, since I was alive to experience it, or not experience it, or whatever.
On the phone with a mentor I remembered saying something like: when in life do we really get closure? When friends drift away, relationships end, loved ones die, business ventures fail, and bread inexplicably does not rise despite the presence of 2.5 tablespoons of yeast, do we get closure? Life, I reasoned to a different mentor on the phone, was nothing if not a collection of small non-closures. And why should the end of a college experience be any different?
IV.
I listen to a lot of podcasts about love, and Esther Perel’s is only the latest—a recommendation made by one of said partnered men. I like to think that they’re making me hyper ready for when I’m in a relationship: hours of listening to different love stories will leave me equipped to handle any crisis. In truth, these podcasts are a slightly more intellectual version of watching Divorce Court on the couch with my sister. They allow me to be the sonic equivalent of a voyeur, to relish details of infidelity over coffee in the morning, to listen to shocking violations during a train delay, to go over someone else’s most cherished memory while I pick a work outfit. Love is no more comprehensible in the aftermath of these episodes.
V.
The idea of longevity or permanence being the measure of a relationship’s worth has long been criticized, and this essay by Zoé Samudzi comes to mind. This idea is problematic because it is allegedly capitalistic (indicative of ownership or hoarding) and definitely gendered (according to Samudzi, it is the “submissive” of a relationship that takes the blame for it ending). But still, I can’t seem to let go of the fantasy, and it is not exclusive to the realm of the romantic.
I am flirting with the idea of a summer fling, which is very odd for me because I love forever. I love making things extremely intense when they do not have to be, and convincing myself that so and so is “my person,” and that I should take x or y dramatic romcom measure to win them over. When Ariana Grande said “fell from the sky into my lap/ and I know you know that you’re my soulmate and all that” I felt it. I do not like closure, or endings of any sort, or even admitting that something is not working. I tweet about celebrity breakups. I watch Say Yes to The Dress. In a relationship I anticipate falling into the stereotype of woman-who-can’t-let-go, in complete denial about the fact that my partner clocked out a long time ago. And although I made fun of it, I would probably say that shit about the parallel trees too.
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One Recommendation
Blue Moon, Billie Holiday
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