Closure?

Dear Internauts,

Last year, I determined not to turn 25 in Pennsylvania. Though I got a lot better, by the time my birthday rolled over, I still wasn't in any place to move. I'd really like to find that place this year.

Anyways...

On Law and Order or other similar shows, there's this running theme that victims and/or their families will benefit from the capture and punishment of the guilty. Often the word used in such a case is closure. For these sorts of stories, this is convenient in that the emotional arc of an episode fits nicely within the formulaic time frame. The end is the end is the end.

I have a hard time believing in the reality of that kind of closure. IRL, beginnings and (perhaps especially) endings aren't so tidy. Wounds don't heal the moment you pull the knife out. Scars don't fade the instant the weapon is destroyed. Breaks don't mend when the breaker is found out or locked away or executed.

It's never a clean cut.

I think I want the answers. I think I want to know why while the knife is still in my back. I think if only this could all be presented in an open, reasoned, clear manner then the hurt would go away.

More often than not we never find those perfect reasons.

More often than not life doesn't make any sense in the way we want it to.

More often than not even the answers we may get are nowhere near enough to satisfy our craving for resolution.

Maybe there's no such thing as resolution. Or closure. Or beginnings. Or endings. Maybe the only constant is change. Maybe the only thing I can ever know is that I don't know. Maybe it would be better if I stopped trying to make sense of the senseless. Maybe the disappointment we find in the harsh realities of life isn't because life is disappointing, but because we expected something—not necessarily a better something, but something—DIFFERENT. Often, we expected something less.

It's that old saying about the perfect being the enemy of the good.

Do we really have any clue what the perfect situation would actually be like?

Do we spend so much time thinking of all the ways the past could have gone differently that we miss all the opportunities we have for shaping the future?

My job wasn't all I hoped it would be, because I hoped it would give my life fulfillment beyond the actual tasks required. I wanted it to equal something more than the sum of its parts. Perhaps I wasn't wrong in thinking that whatever I spend the majority of my time doing should be something that doesn't make me miserable, but would I have been less miserable if I worried less about the apparent meaninglessness of the tasks and focused more on the positive parts of my life outside the menial drudgery?

Optimism as some form of blindfold or filter is hideous. Still, if I have to live a life with both good and bad, easy and hard, sensible and senseless, than I might as well not give either side any more than its due.

To bring it back around, I would like to believe that in as much as I am shaped by the outside forces acting upon me, so I influence that outside myself. The rock which splits the river is smoother than the one which stays dry. Maybe that's cheesy.

But then again, there are no perfect endings.

See ya,
O.A.