For Closure Proceedings
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 8, 2013
Sometimes goals that appear meaningful, like speaking your mind, getting closure, or getting an art degree, are excuses for pursuing feel-good results we damn well know will turn out badly. If you put aside your yearning for a better world while examining the probable results of your actions, however, you’re much more likely to do actual good, even when it doesn’t feel so hot, rather than let good intentions draw you into making the same old mistakes. No matter how right it feels to try, getting the last word, closure, and/or a BFA just aren’t worth it.
–Dr. Lastname
It really isn’t my ex-girlfriend’s fault that I got paranoid and couldn’t work for two months—she didn’t make me start using meth with her (she’s was a heavy user when we met). I used because I wanted to, not just because I loved her and the chemistry between us was amazing. Eventually, though, the meth made me unbelievably paranoid (I’d never been into drugs before) and I thought she was putting the smell of cat piss in my apartment. I also couldn’t sleep, think straight, or pay attention to anything for more than two seconds, so it wasn’t long before my boss told me to get help or else. Months of treatment have almost put my brain back where it was before and I’m almost ready to return to work, but I want my ex-girlfriend to know I don’t blame her and I want us to part on good terms, so I think we should meet once more, just to get closure. My goal is to erase the negativity caused by my bad reaction to meth and close the book on the situation for good.
After month of treatment, you should be well-versed in how to approach your addiction one day at a time; while there might be a rehab out there that preaches having one last meth binge hurrah “for closure,” it probably won’t be open for long.
The search for closure is the broken person’s version of the Holy Grail; long, dangerous, and ultimately futile. You might think you’re trying to put things right, but you’re really just picking a scab, so if you think it’ll help you heal, the opposite is true.
While your relationship and your addiction aren’t exactly the same, they’ve both forced you to start you thinking about how you handle the difference between your values and needs. Closure isn’t real, especially if that’s what you want your sobriety to be.
Your values, presumably, are to make a living, do a good job, and find relationships with good people. You now know that your needs, however, which have a life of their own and revel in your destruction, are stronger. So before taking a meeting with your old flame, give thought to what you’re going to do about the fire within and the risk of rekindling another disaster.
You may think you’ve learned your lesson and there’s no risk of harm in setting things straight with the girl whom, despite her unfortunate addiction, you were crazy about, but that’s the addiction talking. You’ve got your strengths, but it’s more likely that you’re a guy who has always had a weakness for excitement that didn’t get you into trouble until the wrong opportunity came along. Don’t blame yourself; alert yourself to a sad fact of life you’d rather ignore, which is that weaknesses like yours never go away and you’ll need to become much stronger if you want to manage it.
Your family and friends may want to comfort you and themselves with the lie, rather than facing the truth, by telling you they’re happy you’re back to yourself and confident it won’t happen again. If you talk to people who’ve been through a similar experience, however, they’ll remind you of how easy it is for strong feelings to take over, how wonderful it feels, and how hard it is to stop. You need some 12-step friends and/or a therapist to ground you in the realities of your weakness and coach you on how to fight it.
To begin with, add up the pros and cons of satisfying your need for magical closure. Instead of sadly acknowledging the damage of meth addiction and you and your girlfriend’s tendency to set one another off, you’ll find ways to blame your breakup on mistakes and misunderstandings. The conversation is much more likely to end in conflict or, worse, reconciliation. Your job is to stay clean, get back to work, and develop new strengths, which is what you need to keep that in mind while you consider whether just one more talk with your old girlfriend will do you more harm or good.
Remember, your feelings yearn for a positive ending with her, but it’s your feelings that got you into this mess in the first place. The best way to put this right is to focus on your own sobriety, values, and future.
STATEMENT:
“The nasty words that ended our red-hot affair feel like a blot on the wonderful times we had together, but I know now that feeling too good was what was wrong, not right, with our relationship, and that the way to end things on a positive note is to push us away from further harm and towards better self-control.”
I work way too hard and, since my department was merged with another, I don’t get much recognition, but I love what I do (it involves creating early education programs for needy children) and I feel I’ve had a positive impact that couldn’t have happened in any other way, through any other job. Even though my boss doesn’t notice what I do, I’m not exactly hurting for money or security, but I’m sure not living much life outside my work and the office politics are humiliating, at best. My goal is to figure out how I’ve managed to become such a workaholic and then put some balance back in my life.
Most jobs and relationships we hear about feel good but aren’t good for you (see above), but this may well be the exception. This job feels good because it satisfies your values in a realistic way—it actually expands opportunities for needy kids—without causing you to starve or neglect your future security. It demands major sacrifices, including overwork and on-site disrespect, but those sacrifices may well be worth making. Nevertheless, be clear with yourself about what those sacrifices are.
You don’t describe your personal life, so it’s possible that this job may interfere with your time spent with your kids (or perhaps starting a family), and/or your partner, or reduce your ability to support one another. Your impact on improving the lives of kids may come at the cost of your relationship with your own kids, or of your marriage, or, if you’re single, your ability to find a relationship and start a family of your own. Obviously, there’s no guarantee that you can sustain both a high-impact, idealistic job and a family at the same time; no matter how good you are at balancing on the high wire, life is never fair enough to offer you all the opportunities you deserve. So your choice may be the hard and unavoidable one, between the do-good job/not-so-good personal life (or a feel-good-but-not-so-meaningful job with a better personal life).
Before making that choice, seek good advice about job alternatives, including looking for similar jobs elsewhere and re-structuring your current job. Be sure that your idealism and perfectionism haven’t drawn you into making sacrifices that aren’t really necessary. If you find, however, that you can’t change your personal life without sacrificing what you most value about your job, and vice versa, then you’ve got a truly tough decision to make. The good news is that you’ve done nothing wrong while doing great good, but the bad news is that there’s no way to balance your life better without giving up a large part of what you love about your work.
In any case, don’t mistake the pain of hard choices for failure, because these are the choices that come from good values, hard work, and an unfair world. Respect your accomplishments, even as you decide whether to move in a new direction.
STATEMENT:
“I feel like I must be doing something wrong to be working so hard for little recognition and very limited personal time, but I value what I’m doing and the results are substantial and impossible to achieve in any other way. So I’m proud of what I’ve done and confident that I have good reason to make whatever choice is most meaningful at this stage of my life.”
