Post Mortem: Closure

I do not know how we became a culture obsessed with “closure,” but I admit I love the damn thing. I hate the feeling of unrest in my gut from awkward, ugly and hurtful endings, especially where I feel my heart never fully heals due to the love cut off at the quick. When The Bean left, I reeled from the swift and unexplainable exit. I could not fathom how it seemed to me that we were just getting to the good stuff, and he “imploded” (his word) and left body, mind and spirit. I needed closure and answers to my questions, but if someone does not acknowledge that you are alive closure tends to be elusive. Well…at least until I saw him driving to the Bike Shop.

As I turned my car around I cried out to myself, “What I need matters too!” So there we were in the parking lot face-to-face for the first time in four months. I just wanted to know from The Bean, “Do you know why you left me?”

He kept talking over and over again about when he did the “Post Mortem” on our relationship. I found strange comfort in his words given the pain of losing him set me on fire like a death. I led one of work’s Bereavement Support Groups the day before, and I kept thinking to myself, “It is okay that I have been so lost and incapable of almost anything–I just have been grieving.” Grieving like death. Something died between us, but I never wanted him out of my life, so maybe I would be better served to say something died in him. Maybe.

He told me that the reason why he had to leave immediately and cut me off fully centered on his feeling judged for not wanting to look at the effect his past might be having on his present. He said, “I learned everything I could back when those things happened, and I never want to think of them again. The longer we were together and the closer we became, the more pain I found myself in with you. You live in your past, present and future all at the same time. This way works for you–its what makes you so good at your job–and I know you were not intentionally judging me, but you require the person you are with to look at things, and I did not want to. I did not need to. I already got what I could out of them and want to leave them buried in the past where they happened.”

Figuring that I had already been pegged correctly, and that it was no time to stop being my own damn self, I said to him, “But when you saw Ana (THE EX), you said that the shit of her life was weighing her down even more because she refuses to deal with it; yes?” He agreed. I went on, “So, it seems strange that you would want others to deal with their stuff, but you do not want to deal with yours. Plus, I did not set out to root around to find your past pain, I brought up these things because they were hurting you, and us, in your present.”

When telling all of this to Paparazzo, he asked, “What was his major in college?” I told him what he already knew, “HISTORY.” Paparazzo replied rolling his eyes, “Just checking.” Irony. Irony. Irony.

Now granted, The Bean could have just been blowing smoke up my ass with all of this, but I do not really think so. He left me because I got inside the facade and that is not how he does things. He is the one who gives and never receives. He is the one in control. He is the one there for the girl–and he does love to date girls who have been molested–and all her problems. I brought disorder to the delicate balance of chaos and control he exerted over his life, but the disorder possessed a rightness to it because it centered on his needs being important.

Remember those drawings he did? Ours was an equal relationship. He could not be in control with me given the pain of my past. Not this girl. Not this time. I am the fucking poster child for recovery. I deal with the shit of my life. And he is right; it does work for me. The problem is that even if my way does not work for him, neither did his.

Given how this is my damn blog and I can say whatever I want, you would think I would bash him royally. You would think. I just cannot do it because I know too much. Too much about him and too much about adult children of alcoholics. I bought a book. I read up, which is another point of irony given my being a well-trained chaplain that I never really thought so much about this issue when we were together. One thing I read turned on the big light bulb over my head. In Children of Alcoholism: A Survivor’s Manual by Seixas and Youcha I read, “The inability to trust [their] own feelings and perceptions puts [them] in a precarious position. Trying to do away with uneasiness by hiding it and hoping no one else will see is exhausting…” and as a result “secrecy, evasion, and deception all [become] as acceptable as the truth.”

I kept seeing The Bean over and over in the pages of the book. I did not want to see him. I wanted to believe he would be the exception to the rule. I wanted to believe he would be the poster child for figuring it out on your own and getting it right. I wanted to believe he would not be just plain typical, but I kept seeing him over and over again.

The book put new light on why he lies to his parents all the time, why he has no real idea what he likes to receive–he can never trust anyone would take his desires seriously–and why all these things came up for us when they did.  The book talks about how real intimacy will cause the adult child of an alcoholic to fill with panic, which is actually a good sign of new life being right around the corner.  They do  best to face their past while being supported by love, especially intimate love, in the present.  I understand that, for being with him helped my whole being to heal in ways I could never approach without the kind of connection and intimacy real trust with sex can only bring.

I do not know what it was really like in his house as a kid, but given my own history with incest my imagination is probably pretty damn close. Even with all the really hopeful and helpful information contained in the book, I realized just how painful and distorted growing up with an alcoholic really is. Who can you ever trust if you cannot trust your parents? Yes. Both parents. The one who drinks almost ends up making more sense than the one who stays and allows all the craziness to continue. Nothing is real. Your perceptions are not real. You are not real.

So I stood talking to The Bean thinking,”You did the best you could.” I felt so sad. Sad. Sad. Sad. Here is this amazing, beautiful, brilliant man who just cannot go the emotional distance right now. I still hope he will one day, but I know I will never see it. He has been practicing and perfecting burying the pain for a long ass time. He will have one hell of a journey if he ever makes the changes necessary to accept and give real love. I know. I have been practicing them for years.  That is why I walked away thinking how good it was for me that we parted, and maybe not the best choice for him.  Maybe.  Or maybe I started something - planted a seed in a fertile garden perhaps - that will grow and flourish one day when he can go the emotional distance and not keep reburying things over and over again.

I am reminded of Robert Frost’s first lines from Mending Wall:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

So I stood there knowing how much I could go the emotional distance. I told him how angry I became over him leaving just when things got interesting. I got to the core fears and wanted to face them head on because of how much I wanted to be with him healthy and whole. I wanted to give him my very best and keep raising the bar again and again. I wanted to be more real, more loved, more loving, more giving, more free. I could see how we challenged each other in every single way and were on the verge of something great for ourselves as individuals and together as a couple. (Check out this great article about getting to the good stuff.) And then it was over. Sad. Sad. Sad.

I found closure to the most important and devastating chapter of my adult life standing in a parking lot. I found a way to bless him and our time together. I found a way to voice my anger and disappointment in him and the way he cut me out of his life. I told him about the destructive path of his verbal rage and emotional extinction. I told him how profoundly sorry I felt to find I caused him so much pain. I found forgiveness again.  I found a way to say goodbye to my first real love.

I found closure.