Closure.

I’ve been reading my journal from my high school and college years.

FYI: If you don’t want to be reminded of the total tool you used to be, never read your journal from your high school and college years.

As I read page after page, a paragraph I wrote during one of the worst times of my life jumped out at me:

“I feel more and more pessimism seeping in and ruling my life. I’m such a cynical, jaded asshole. I used to breathe optimism, dream and work for the fairy tale and live for the phrase “Never say never!”. What happened to that sweet, optimistic girl I used to be? This is too big for me. Too much for me here on my own. I am so tired. I know I’ll try to forgive everyone, try to forgive myself. I know I will try! I just think it may be futile. I may go on, but I don’t think I will ever get over it. I’ll never forget. I just don’t think it’s possible, no matter what I do. Closure is an impossible dream for people like me.”

Closure.

It’s always seemed like such a bullshit term.

I can forgive most things, but the things that cut me the deepest seem so deeply rooted that I don’t think I can move past them.

I’m not sure I can forgive or forget.

I’ve tried to find this mythical “closure” and peace for myself. I’ve read books, searched my soul, written eleventyhundred novels about my pain and frustration and talked and talked and TALKED to the people it involved, therapists, clergy, family, friends, and random strangers on buses and diners.

I have come a long way and forgiven more than I thought possible, but closure for the really big and painful things hasn’t happened despite desperately wanting it.

Given all this desperate emo I have going on about it, you can understand how shocked and surprised I was when I not only got some closure last week, but I got it not even knowing how much I really needed it.

An old college boyfriend called me.

For the sake of anonymity I need to give him a nickname for this post. While highly tempted to dub him with some truly wretched moniker like “Chauncey” or “Jim Bob” just to mock him, SINCE HE IS READING THIS post, I will be nice. (And so will you all, right? Right.)

We’ll call him “Flyboy”.

This is us.

(Sorry about the bar over his face-I’m serious about protecting his identity. He gave me permission to write this but I am not sure he realizes some of the consequences that can happen when you appear on a non-obscure blog. I just wish there was something I could do about protecting you all from my hair.)

Flyboy lived 3 doors down from my dorm room and we dated most of my freshman year, but I am not entirely sure how we met. In all honestly, I couldn’t tell you where we went on our first date, what our first kiss was like or precisely how and when we became boyfriend and girlfriend.

I CAN tell you that I really liked him and that we were inseparable a lot of the time. We could talk for hours.  He was smart, funny and we loved debating and bantering back and forth. He was from the east coast and his stories about where he grew up and the culture he lived in was appealing to an ill-traveled girl born and bred in Utah.

He called me Peg.

I called him Al.

I took interest in political science because of him and I own a pendant that says, “I believe in peace, bitch” which I totally blame on his large collection of Tori Amos CD’s. He was also just damn FUN to be around a lot of the time. When the dude that played Greg Brady on The Brady Bunch came to campus and picked Flyboy out of the audience to come party on stage guess which dork he drug up on stage to disco with him?

Yup.

There I am.

Dorkalicious me.

He had the most fascinating eyes. They reminded me of a lion. One moment they would be different shades of amber and gold, the next green…I could never quite figure out what color they were, just that they were beautiful.

In so many ways he treated me better than any man ever has.

He bought me the very first gift I ever received from a boy-beautiful silver dangle earrings from a small boutique on South Street in Philadelphia that he purchased when my back was turned because I said how pretty they were. I loved them and kept them for years.

I wasn’t used to people doing things like that for me and it earned him a rather rabid devotion on my part. My past relationships pretty much consisted of me doing most, if not all or the work-but this guy WANTED to be with me. He liked spending time with me. He would go flying on the weekends and I would spread a blanket out on the quad with my lunch and a book and he’d wave his wings at me. He asked my opinion, took me places, showed me how to use the Internet took me to see The Mystery of Edwin Drood TWICE and also was fond of my very weird twin sister.

We also really liked to make out. We could do that (and…er…other things) for HOURS.

A lot of our relationship was grand.

But…

A lot of our relationship was bad.

Bad as in, it was a relationship that really damaged me and created baggage I carted around for years, bad.

In so many ways he treated me more poorly than any man ever has.

Like a lot of cocky 18-year-olds, he could be a big jerk a lot of the time. There was quite a bit of conflict between him and my roommates.  Some of the stuff that happened between us made me feel about as useful as a 3-dollar-bill, pure as water from the East River and about a half-an-inch high.

But…

I was no angel.

I was highly needy, insecure and I put a huge portion much of my past, complicated relationship on him.  I was trying to get out of him what I never received from the man in my life prior to him: approval. And that is never fair to anyone.

I have huge abandonment issues and was incapable of having a grownup, honest conversation about anything negative about our relationship. I was too scared he would leave me. Instead I would pick 2 AM to have teary, pleading one-sided fights conversations that pretty much consisted of me crying out, “PLEASE, PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME! PLEASE LOVE ME!!!!!!!!!!” (Relationship tip: MEN LOVE THIS)

The way we ended was horrible and involved a lot of hurt for ourselves and others. It left me feeling confused and really bad about myself for a long time.

But…

Eventually, little by little, it stopped being such a big deal to me. I got to the point where I didn’t really “need” resolution from him any longer. As each year passed I thought about that aspect of it less and less and more about the positive aspects of what we had. Because there was an awful lot to smile about.

In other words?

I grew up.

We did have some contact through the years and he friended me on Facebook this year, but it never led to any kind of conversation I would call productive and sometimes I wondered what an honest “Come to Jesus” conversation about that time period would yield.

I found out.

A few weeks ago I posted a Facebook status update inviting people to come into the chatroom of a radio show I was hosting and guess who came along?

YUP.

Flyboy.

He was funny, witty, smart, well versed on the topic being discussed and everyone liked him.

I LIKED HIM.

The more I heard from him the more I realized why I had liked him in the first place.  Which in itself was a gift because for many years I just thought about the mistreatment and the good of the relationship got lost in it. Seeing a different side to it made me remember I wasn’t with him simply because I was desperate to be with someone and it felt good to remember WHY. That the positive I was left with was a genuine thing.

The next day he sent me a short email me to say “good show” and I happened to be online. We struck up a friendly email conversation. We wrote about our lives and our kids and eventually I relayed that my worst fear as a mother to boys is that they would mistreat and damage women.

He asked if it was a general statement or pointed towards him.

I gulped and then decided to tell the truth and tentatively typed out, “BOTH.”

Then he asked if it would be improper for him to call me so we could talk about some things.

My stomach started twisting. So far everything was going so well, but I have had conversations that started well enough end up in flaming death spirals of suckitude.

But…

I was curious, so I said it was fine to call.

(And for those who may wonder, I have a completely transparent relationship with my husband about things like this. I tell him everything. And I knew that Jonathan would have zero problem with it, which he doesn’t)

I expected to be nervous, but I wasn’t.

We talked for hours.

Hours were needed because I basically had to do a play-by-play of our entire relationship. For probably a million reasons I couldn’t begin to explain why, Flyboy has very little memory of our time together.

(I’m trying not to take that part personally and go into “I am totally forgettable mode”. Heh.)

Basically, he said all he remembers that I was a total sweetheart and quite a catch and that we were great together and parted as friends.

For once in my life, I was speechless.

Part of me was really tempted to just leave it at that because hello! How sweet is that?

But that would have been a lie.

The thundering silence on my end of the phone was pretty much a tip off that is did not go down that way. And because he knew it wasn’t the rose bed he was remembering he asked me to tell him everything I remembered about us.

EVERYTHING.

So, I did.

It was HARD.

EMBARRASSING.

MORTIFYING.

But…

It was also fun.

Sweet.

Hilarious.

And kind of like walking around in an old comfy pair of jeans you forgot you owned.

Also, it needs to be stated that as satisfying as being A BILLION TIMES BETTER LOOKING THAN YOU WERE AT 18 and having your ex realize that fact is? Having him tell you (in a totally non-creepy, non-come-on way) that you were very pretty to him when you weighed 220 lbs. is a million times better.

All the physical compliments in the world were nothing compared to how his apology made me feel, though. The way he completely manned up to EVERYTHING. The guy didn’t have one defensive word or tone in his body.  He felt true remorse for any wrong doing.

I did not expect him to be so…truly sorry.

I guess you would have to be there, and honestly they are details I would like to keep to myself, but it just did not go down how I imagined it would over the years.

By the end, as more and more detail came out I felt like I was repeatedly kicking a remorseful puppy. I don’t like holding on to things or whipping people repeatedly for mistakes. Despite what some may think, I don’t relish the pain of other people, especially when I have anything to do with why it happened in the first place.

And really…there is no point in bringing it up anymore. We were both messed up kids that could have been MUCH better to each other.  We’re all grown up and we wish each other well.

I have let the negative go.

I really have.

We brought the conversation to a great close, I feel like he’s a good, dear friend, a great guy and I am thrilled that he has a wife, kids he adores and kick ass job that I WISH I COULD TELL YOU ALL WHAT IT IS, it’s so impressive.

I wished him well, told him to keep in touch and when I set down my phone…it was done.

All the years of hurt and bad feelings and poor self-image it created about myself just lifted and disappeared as if Cinderella’s fairy godmother came and Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo’d them away.

So much peace of mind came with it.

It was one of the most freeing things I have ever experienced and It wasn’t something I worked for, forced, pushed.

It just happened.

And it was normal.

NORMAL.

I am capable of having normal closure about something huge and ugly and hurtful to me.

Maybe this happens more often than I think, though.

Has it happened to you? Because I’d REALLY love you to pipe up in the comments.

For me, it had an aspect to it I rarely experience. Granted, this is not “THE BIG ONE” as far as closure on the relationship that haunts you till you effing DIE goes, but it was still a very significant relationship to me and I didn’t think it was possible for me to get here, but I did.

So, knowing that I am capable of this kind of closure, who knows?

Maybe it will happen in the other areas of my life I had given up on.

Maybe one day I CAN give myself and those I dearly love what we need most.

Closure.

Suddenly, it doesn’t seem like such a bullshit term anymore.

Never say never…right?