All I want for the holidays is closure

We all have our tales of heartbreak from middle school. A story more tragic than any Shakespearean play was my first relationship in ninth grade — that girl was everything to me. She gave me many firsts. She was the first girl who sent me “XOXO” on MSN Messenger. She was the first person I held hands with. She was the first person I kissed.

This was all until one fateful Christmas morning when I got an email from her. The subject title: “This might hurt a little…” In all honesty, it hurt… a lot. It hurt in the ways a 14-year-old boy could hurt — and that is a freakin’ lot. So that’s how my first relationship ended. Your boy got dumped via email on Christmas morning. Merry Christmas.

Fast forward three years. It was my senior year of high school. I found myself at a camp where students from all around Sydney come. There were a bunch of empowering lectures and talks, and, lo and behold, my “Merry Christmas, we’re over, bro” ex-girlfriend was there too! By this time it had been three years. In middle-school/high-school years that’s like 30 years of time passing. Water under the bridge, as you Americans say.

I said hey to her and was like, “Woah! It’s been ages. Good to see you!” I thought nothing much of it and made my way to the cabin.

Now, one of the camp activities was to ask someone to this big prom-style dance at the end of the week. And so, being the goofy guy I am, one of the evenings in front of the whole camp, I did this huge performance where I played guitar, did some dancing, made some jokes and asked my friend Vivien to the dance. It was pretty fun — everyone loved the performance and the night ended on a high note. The next morning was a little interesting, though. I bumped into my ex from ninth grade and said hey again. She responded curtly, and with a hesitant tone she followed up with a question: “Hey, Sam… Can we… Can we go for a walk?”

“Hm? Oh. Yeah, of course,” I replied.

We started to walk by the camp’s nice, scenic lakeside. We were making some small talk when all of a sudden, with no warning or pre-emptive AMBER Emergency Alert text, she randomly started bawling her eyes out. Like a river — no, a waterfall — no, a flashflood started gushing out of her eyes.

“I’m just so sorry. Seeing the man you’ve become, I am just so sorry for letting you go…” she managed to get out, her words interspersed with breathing spasms and sniffles. “I know it has been three years,” she continued, “but I haven’t let you go.”

Wow. This was everyone’s dream. This was it! This was the moment every single person in life desires and dreams for and prays for. It’s the very thing we live life for — it’s the reason we work out and get fit after we break up with someone. It’s the reason our Snapchats are filled with attractive people. And it was right in front of me. Ninth grade Samuel who was dumped on Christmas morning was screaming — he was in “I can’t even” mode on steroids. But in this moment, I thought about all the hurts I had had and all the hangups I had still held onto with others, and let the moment pass.

I patted her on the shoulder. “We were both young at the time. Don’t worry about it. We both learned a lot from that relationship.”

This time of semester is an interesting period for a lot of people. It’s when a lot of students are ending long distance relationships that are fizzling out of heat after a passionate summer. It’s the time that the weather gets a little colder and our withdrawal symptoms from the warmth of cuddle buddies hurts extra badly. I feel it too. Past relationships or past situations trouble us on replay after replay. I find myself violently switching between, “What did I do wrong?” and “How could I have done different?” to name-blaming and bitterness more bitter than the late-night lemon lime bitters at my local bar. As Christmas approaches once more this year, all I want for Christmas is closure.

Closure is a hard thing. It’s very confusing. There’s a lot that people say about how to find closure: make yourself busy, find someone else or have a good conversation with that person. There’s a lot out there that I’m sure you all already know. So for this article, I just want to give two additional ways of finding closure that I think might help some right now or in the future.

One great way to find closure is by breaking certain memories that that person owns in your heart. Do it again.

Go to the places that you shared only with your ex and go with other friends that make you laugh and give you a reason to smile again when you pass said place. I find that that helps so much. I’ve taken my squad to romantic date spots that I used to go with people I was hung up with. It’s kind of weird at first, but it is actually quite nice.

And for those nights where you’re up late at night and you’re feeling a way and you know you shouldn’t text them but their name is already on your “Send New Message” header: become a Daily Trojan columnist and write your feelings out. It’s very therapeutic. Haha, just kidding. But seriously, it’s great to find an outlet, whatever it may be, and allow yourself to feel the feelings you have. I find in our instant change, dad diet and LTE network culture, we have a pressure to be perfect the next day. But, it shouldn’t be that way. The same way we tell people that they should mourn for separation from a loved one departing into the next life, we need to allow ourselves time to mourn the separation of a season of life with specific people.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I’m sure that there are many things this Thanksgiving that you could be thankful for, and I hope that one of them for you could be closure.

Samuel Sunito is a junior majoring in business administration.  His column, “Love and Other Things,” ran every other Friday,