Enough people have said: “you should be over that by now,” so much so that you start to believe it yourself.
And then a thought hits, on a random Tuesday afternoon, harder than expected. Someone, something, crosses your mind— and you are back where you started. You realize you are nowhere near over it.
Our culture is obsessed with closure. Movies and TV shows portray relationship endings being tied up with a ribbon, and if that pivotal scene, signifying the relationship is over for good, does not happen, then there must be more to the character’s story. This fixation on closure is beyond just societal, with psychology explaining some people’s need for it. Cognitive closure is the psychological desire to have a concrete answer to a question in order to avoid ambiguity and confusion. Our desire for closure is increased when we are under stress, and so when stressful situations like breakups or an unexpected death, it is natural to feel robbed of an answer and desire closure.
In our society, people are expected to get over situations, even when they are emotionally complex or take longer to heal from. Returning to work shortly after the death of a loved one, breakups being treated like minor setbacks or trauma being minimized due to time passing, are all effects of society’s expectations of people to move on.
We try to put a timeframe on letting go and moving on after something life-altering happens. From breakups to unforeseen job terminations, a major health diagnosis or financial upheaval, emotional recovery is treated as a race to finish the healing process and become “better.” And if you are not, then you are doing something wrong.
When we grieve, we go through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Psychologist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross developed the five stages as an answer to the emotions people go through while suffering terminal illness as a way to cope and face their own deaths. Today, the model is more commonly used when people lose a loved one. Each step is just as hard as the last, but knowing that there are countless others sharing the experience can serve as a comfort for many. Grief is not linear. We do not set a timeframe for how long someone is allowed to grieve.
Although losing a relationship you had with a person is not the same as losing a living person, the absence you feel in your life is the same. The difference is that the former is often faced with comments like “you need to get over it” and “it was not that serious” by well-intentioned friends who think that healing follows a predictable, upward trajectory, when the reality is much more up-and-down.
There are good days and there are bad days, days when you do not even think about what happened and days when it is the only thought running through your head. Due to this rollercoaster, progress can often feel inconsistent and even nonexistent.
For me, revisiting old memories is not a way of going back to the beginning and reliving the situation, but a sign that I have a new understanding of what happened and that I am in a place where I am able to process my emotions and have a different viewpoint. I have accepted that I will never move on, but I am proud of myself for moving through it.
To move through is an ongoing process, not a race to the destination of being over it. Instead of surpassing the emotions and letting them bubble up inside, we need to let ourselves feel them. Whether that be by journaling your thoughts, talking to friends, a therapist or even just allowing yourself to cry, going through your emotions is a vital step to going forward with your life and not getting stuck in the past.
Experiences, whether good or bad, affect us and shape us. Expecting to forget them is unrealistic. Rather than viewing them as obstacles to overcome, see them as crucial parts of your life story. By integrating them into that story, you are acknowledging what happened and letting it shape you rather than control you.
Trying to delete a memory is impossible, but integration is realistic. Each time a memory resurfaces, you understand it differently because you are different. Over time, the sharpness and pain that you once associated with the experience is softened and instead of getting over it, you learn from it.
