Wait first, what are we even closing? Is hankering for post-relationship closure wise?

A few years ago, my first very girlfriend left me after a two-and-a-half year period of trying out this thing you people refer to as, well, love. (Yea yea, late bloomer, bite me). It was beautiful, easily the purest thing I have had, but as with other things in life, everything runs its course. The “goodbye” hit me like a left hook from the fist of an Obalende tout (I still remember the mutual tears in that restaurant, Hollywood stuff). Still smarting from the disbelief a week later, you know, that “different stages of grief” vibe, I called for a meeting with her. In my words, I wanted to “analyse the situation”, do an in-depth assessment of what went wrong. I was inwardly nursing a faint hope of getting back with her.

Comfort (let’s call her Comfort, never mind that what I felt post-breakup was nothing of the sort) agreed to a rendezvous, and I was ecstatic. But for reasons best known to her, she stood me up, causing my skin to melt under the unforgiving sun on the day, not to mention a phone battery drained from 69 un-returned calls. I was livid, going home with only a bruised ego for company, but few years down the line, I am glad that Comfort never showed up. Honest to God, I do not even know how the “meeting” would have played out (I wonder what she is up to these days, but that’s not why we are here).

Much is made about that exercise where past lovers whose emotional candle has flickered out choose to meet one last time for the purpose of achieving “closure”. Here, two individuals, who used to wake up to each other’s breath on many a morning purposely choose to engage in some heart-to-heart discussion, trying to find out why the emotional engines “knocked” before drawing the curtain on their love story.

Sounds mature, doesn’t it? Logical, at the very least, but I wonder what kind of discussion wants to spring from a heart that is bleeding, one still in shock, one that is probably nowhere close to healing (this is, of course, assuming that the relationship was genuine, and not some curiosity ride, or situationship that later got complicated).

For the most part, each is trying to defend the theory that it was the other’s fault, unwilling to concede, and in that emotional state, what you get is the Blame Olympics. Lingering suspicions are brought to the fore, the nagging rears its head again, and honesty would be made to look like a terrible policy in this instance. Not good for the health in any form, if you ask me.

There is equally the not-so-small matter of what such a rendezvous seeks to achieve in the long run. Okay, you talk, manage to sieve out what went wrong, identify your respective flaws….and then what? Thing is, trying to figure out what was wrong with the car after the auto-crash has occurred, or comparing what lane could have been taken to avoid the collision, does not necessarily guarantee that there would be no reckless driving in the future.

Conducting emotional post-mortems goes to nothing, really. People come in different packages, and if they are not compatible, they simply aren’t. Putting all of this in perspective, one is almost thrown into a crazy line of thought, something in the tone of “See ehn, I don’t have to ever see you, just carry your cheating, heartbreaking self and go abeg!” (Afterall, Infidelity is pretty much a major diagnosis for sour relationships, other issues like emotional stability, temperament and asexuality share seats at the back).

I belong to the school which upholds the view that people should dust themselves up, pick what’s left of their heart (if it was there in the first place), and move on to new adventures. No point looking back, besides, you never know which ex-lover could get you all “pillar of salt” kind of messed up. Who closure don epp???