what if closure isn't an option?

harm repair, dissolving connections, hopes for community

in another world, i imagine we have cultural values that promote conflict resolution skills. when we reference the word community, we know exactly what it means:; instead of the distant pang in our chest gesturing towards loss, longing, and alienation.

i’ll never forget a conversation we had in a philosophy class a couple years back. my teacher was gushing about bonobos and how they have this “empathy gene”, and how humans have way more in common genetically than we do with chimpanzees. but, since it’s common to (at least partially) accept that we descend from chimpanzees, we also accept that humans are just violent animals. chimps are known for their competitive behavior. whereas bonobos favor connection over competition; one of their core values is intimacy, and kindness. the part of my professors sharings i’ll never forget is when she openly asked us, “i wonder what our world would look like if we recognized our shared ancestry with bonobos, instead of chimpanzees?”. in other words, if we embraced our connective & community centric DNA instead of our “violent animal nature”?

i can’t stop writing about community lately. mostly, i’m in this really awesome communal sweet spot. there are people in my life who are dedicated to abolition, harm repair, and cultivating care over alienation. at the same time, we’ve all been indoctrinated under the same carceral/colonial project. we are taught to “keep our enemies” close—just one measure of how the surveillance state gets us to do their work for them and surveil each other. (and a tender reminder that our oppressors are fucking lazy…find hope in this.) even among those building relational community building skills, we still fall into the same old traps that strip us of our humanity and bind us to viewing each other as binary/fixed people. that is, i’m fully capable of making the people who have hurt me out to be bad unchanging people. and i do it a lot, even though i know it’s not rooted in reality. because, it fucking hurts to be betrayed by someone you trusted, and honestly, it’s easier to just discount them and label them as unfixable, uncaring, and selfish.

i went through a gnarly fucked up avoidant ass break up this summer. TLDR, my ex broke up with me over text, promised to offer me closure, and then just disappeared and never followed through. through that whole process, i really rooted down in my heart and tried to understand their fears, and make space to trust their integrity & ability to come back to their heart to honor my experience. (one of my fav relationship anarchy values; trust is better) they didn’t though. and even though it’s been devastating on my heart and sense of trust, i also understand that was their decision. i bound myself to compassion during my break up because i KNOW that everytime someone betrays me, on the other side of my grief and anger is a deep well of compassion and empathy for the human who could hurt us both like that. so, i’ve been trying to side step all of that and just stay in my heart and feel the hurt fully and choose to keep my heart open to the infinite sea of connection and love anyways.

so that’s what i did this summer. and a lot of my friends thought i was fucking insane. or maybe were worried i wasn’t fully processing my grief. i’ve written a bit about how weird grieving a break up is when you’re poly, mostly because of how we view grief as a social abnormality (keep that shit behind closed doors, right?) another thing i noticed, is how many people (who were also confused by my choice to empathize) resorted to telling me how “fucked up” and “bad” my ex was for hurting me like that. but i don’t need that kind of allyship. in fact, i don’t find unanimous solidarity with my grief to be the highest form of connection while i’m grieving. i CRAVE people who can hold my experience and the complexity of anothers at the same time.

don’t get me wrong, i’m grateful for the people in my life who advocated for my anger. who worried i was giving to much understanding to someone that doesn’t seem to have spent too much time taking into consideration how my heart is holding up. i also find a boldness in the people who challenge me when to see all sides of a situation, even when i’m tending to my own hurt. both are incredibly valuable lenses to look through.

while i’ve been grieving there have been parts of me that would love to say my ex is a selfish, uncaring asshole who never gave a fuck about me and was just wasting my time, and messing with my heart! those parts of me are big sometimes. and then i remember our connection; what i felt. and it feels dismissive to me and my experience to write off my experience as a waste of time, or to say that there wasn’t love between us. i know what i felt. and it causes more harm to my heart to shrug it off as an expensive lesson. because the reality is, i loved Being in love with this person. and i loved our relationship so fucking much. their avoidance and fear doesn’t change that for me. also as other breakups have taught me, sometimes good shit has to die in order for new cooler shit to grow. and even though im not there yet, i know there is a future me that is grateful to my ex for breaking up with me because i doubt i would have ever left them on my own. and at the very least it’s had me contemplating grief, connection, and being in good relationship with others. but even know, i can see how deeply it’s rippling into the future. my boundaries are getting stronger, my desires more clear, the kinds of relationships that feel really fucking good.

it’ll be a year in june. chances are, i won’t get closure. but at some point, i stopped measuring time by loss and starting measuring it by pleasure again.

so, what if we don’t get closure?

it’s more likely that we wont. in this world. based on what we’ve been given to give back to each other. that’s a reality. we’ve all gotten quite good at running from each other. from intimacy. from connection.

i am convinced, however, that theres something really beautiful on the other side of tension. i actually think thats why tension feels so somatically visceral and alive. ive experienced it. when im with people who are willing to continue having the hard conversations. there is release on the other side of conflict, and it happens together.

and that’s part of why i hold compassion for the people who have harmed me. i really believe in the possibility of our coming together to repair the fractures in time. of course, there are some people who have physically violated and hurt me that i’m like…damn i don’t know if i could sit before you. i’m still working through that. but im more open to the complexity of it than ever before.

i have a friend/lover/nonhierarchical other whose really gifted in nonviolent empathetic communication who alway says “it sounds complicated” when i’m talking about conflict in my life. i’ve been loving that awareness recently, how nonjudgemental it is, how it holds the nuance of my experience in harm, and the other people involved. i feel really safe telling them about the conflicts in my life because i know theyre going to do their best to view everyone as a human being with their own history of systemic trauma, violence, and experiences.

i started writing hoping to find an answer in myself on what to do if we don’t get closure. i genuinely don’t know. but, i do know its imperative to the future that we exist in this present moment as if we are going to survive all the brutality of the world. as if every moment we have is an embodiment of the higher worlds we imagine. so i exist like that. i exist like every person i’m in connection with deserves clarity and closure. i exist like the prison walls have fallen. i exist like i value community even when i don’t like people who are in my community. i exist like every act of care i place into the world is the most important part of someones day or like its the action thats going to reach out across time and invite them to rethink everything about relationships and how to be in them. i exist like it doesn’t matter if someone hurts me because i still think they are deserving of love. i exist like its an act of love to tend myself towards open heartedness. because it feels GOOD to live openheartedly. it feels good to not take other peoples shit personally. shit you hurt me? damn i hope you deconstruct that, i have a whole life to love and live deeply in.

still tending to these thoughts, these are them as they arise naturally within my body. may we find our way back, together.