Stop Waiting For An Apology That You May Never Get

The myth of closure

A year and a half ago my ex-husband left me at a time when I was at my most vulnerable and in need of his support. The words, “I need you to take care of me for a while,” literally left my lips. One week later he was gone.

Separation alone can be a traumatic event, but for me it was the timing coupled with the loss of the person I considered to be the love of my life that blindsided me. Suddenly, I was on the precipice of a breakdown.

But I remembered who I was. Ruth, the Resilient. Ruth, the Brave. Despite the pain, I took a step back off the ledge and traversed through dark, merciless forests until I could see the streaks of sunlight ahead.

I ran to that light and refused to look back… until a few weeks ago.

Why, nearly two years after he left, was I suddenly sobbing at the sound of Marc Anthony’s song, Hasta Que Vuelvas Conmigo? A song I have heard daily for the past year and never had this kind of reaction to?

Why was I suddenly screaming, “That a-shole!” whenever something seemed to be going wrong (even simply spilling coffee on my jeans)?

An upcoming date on my calendar gave me the answer. D day. The divorce hearing. I knew it was coming. It was what we both wanted (he for different reasons to me, of course). And yet, it was triggering all of these unwanted feelings in me and causing me to relive that night all over again, the night when he said the words, “I don’t want to be married anymore.”

I had prided myself on the strides I took in forging ahead with my new life: returning to my first love of writing; going back to college to study Crystal Healing and Español (I had to stop butchering those Marc Anthony songs!); exploring new experiences and meeting new people. Then suddenly I was right back where I started: heartbroken and mad as hell. Why?

I realised it was because I had never received the heartfelt, sincere apology I believed I deserved as his first love and first wife. You know the kind: the bleeding heart remorseful kind, the tears, the begging for forgiveness, the tight hug in the rain, the stroke-my-ego kind. The closure.

And so what if he did give me that apology and closure? Would it change anything? No. I would still be crying over Marc Anthony songs and blaming him for my coffee-stained jeans, because the one who broke my heart cannot be the one to fix it. That’s my job, not his.

People at their core are good, and I know deep down it was never his intention to hurt me. Perhaps it was too big a responsibility for him to handle when he was used to me being the one to take care of him and our relationship. Perhaps he panicked. Perhaps the easier option was to run away than it was to stay and help me weather my personal storm. Will I ever truly understand why he left the way he did and when he did? No. But closure is accepting that I’m not going to get the apology or explanation, and I’m not going to get ‘one more hug’.

Instead, I choose to be grateful for what we had and acknowledge how far I’ve come. My life now is better than what I thought it could possibly be back then when our relationship ended, when I couldn’t see the light.

The reality is I will feel those pangs of longing from time to time, tears may come, a smile (or profane utterance), and that’s ok. It was a time in my life that positively impacted the both of us but now its officially over.

This is closure.

It’s time to move on, sweetheart.

Gracias for reading and for the 👏👏👏