Can Closure Be Too Little, Too Late?

What is closure? In the context I’ll be using it, closure refers to gaining a sense of peace, understanding and emotional release that comes from gaining understanding about certain events in our lives. For example, people will often get closure from having that after-breakup conversation with someone they were involved with. That’s only one example but it’s a pretty common one and serves to illustrate the point I’m getting at for today’s post. It stands to reason that closure can come in the most interesting ways at the most unexpected time.

Just a few short years ago, I had the opportunity to connect with someone from my past where I was able to discuss how much of a dick I was through my teen years. It would be decades before I would come to realize that many of the symptoms caused by Type-1 Diabetes was the root cause of most of the isues I caused for myself in my teens. This isn’t and shouldn’t be an all-encompassing excuse of course but it did lend itself to how I was almost universally in a bad mood and treated others poorly. I cost myself several friendships and relationships during my youth because I couldn’t reconcile my disease with proper management. But I’m glad I got closure on some of those issues and the people I’ve spoken to were gracious enough to show some undertanding.

From my side of things, there’s much closure I often feel I’m owed by many individuals who have wronged me over the years. In 2018, my career and my life took a left turn. The only thing worse than having someone wrong you in life, is having someone accuse you of something that puts your entire life in jeopardy. This is what happened to me, back in 2018. I found myself in an unfortunate set of circumstances that I would have never imagined being in. I won’t get into all the gritty details in this post but it did lead me to change the entire course of my life, my career and my view on others and how I’m treated by them. Let’s just say that all things considered, life is pretty good right now and I can’t exactly complain, but there’s a stain on my soul that may never heal as a result of what some others have done to me.

While I really want to tell the story and explain how I came about getting some closure on this issue, for reasons that should be understandable, I really shouldn’t be naming people or referring to specific situations. Not all of this is just MY story to tell. And it would be wrong of me to tell the part that isn’t mine. So I’ll stick to what I can say. Recently, I was out at a work event with everyone from the organization that I work at. It was a pretty good event and it included a tour for the entire staff of the venue we were in. As we were walking the site, we came around a corner that had a security guard kiosk and imagine my surprise at seeing one of the involved parties in the events of 2018 that altered my life forever.

I recognized him immediately, although I wasn’t very surprised at the fact that he didn’t recognize me. After all, it had been half a decade and I had a full face of facial hair whereas I would have been clean shaven back when he knew me. Once the group had cleared, I walked up and greeted him. He was taken aback when he realized who I was. The conversation was congenial enough, as we discussed where we were both explained where we were currently working and what had been happening in our respective lives since the events of 2018. It was a great conversation and I even got to introduce him to my current boss, given that the individual in question was indirectly my boss in my previous career.

As my group moved on to other sections of the site, he was peaking to others who weren’t part of my group, so I moved on. When the day was over and all my staff were leaving the site, I decided I wanted to seek out the individual so that I could shake his hand and say goodbye. When I found him doing his rounds, something happened that I wouldn’t have, and wasn’t expecting. He brought up the past and admitted that I got a raw deal. He explained that he felt I never should have had the accusations made against me and that the organization didn’t deal with it the way they could have. He told me that he always remembered and appreciated the way I came in to work my modified assignments with such enthusiasm and professionalism, there were days when he didn’t believe I was someone dealing with the situation I was in. He felt that other members should have followed my example.

These revelations hit me like a ton of bricks. While I agreed with everything he said, it shocked me to my core to hear him say it. Until that moment, no one from my previous career had admitted that I was treated badly or that the events in question shouldn’t have happened. I know that a lot of people would say that the words were too little, too late. That those things should have been brought up at the time in an effort to mitigate the damage caused to my life and my career. But for some reason, hearing this from him lifted a weight off my shoulders that I had become so accustomed to that I didn’t even know it was there. It was a very special kind of closure that I didn’t know I needed. And for that, I will be forever grateful to him.

Don’t be afraid to seek out that closure. Some of the bad periods of your life could be easily reconciled if you’re willing to seek the answer. Sometimes this might mean saying you’re sorry. Sometimes, it may simply mean giving others the opportunity to say they’re sorry. In any event, closure can be good. It shouldn’t be sold short. After all, whatever can be done to reduce the suffering in one’s life is good, right? Food for thought… ☯️