Screw Closure, Seek This Instead

The scent you dreamed about once upon a time, standing in a glass case behind a perfume counter. Warm, sweet and spicy. The bergamot, deep amber, the woody notes, warm vanilla, jasmine, devilwood, patchouli, freesia, centifolia rose, and praline. How if you could describe yourself and bottle up how you’ve always wanted to feel, this scent, right here, would be it.

The wind that moves throughout your hair, picking up little traces of you to carry with it.

The cities. The places. Everywhere you’ve always wanted to go to leave behind a tiny part of yourself. Everywhere you’ve always wanted to visit and leave carrying a part of it with you.

The sand you’ve wanted to feel warm beneath your feet. The water you’ve wanted to let dance around your skin. The deep blue ocean that makes you think about boundless possibilities. The museums housing the paintings by artists who make you believe that no matter the ugliness, the pain, the darkness, life doesn’t ever cease to be stunning. The streets lively with music and lights you can feel reverberating in your core. The cobblestones walked on by people who spoke a language that is now dead. The forests that make it look like fairies are hiding in those spots where the sun leaves white light dancing at the heads of flowers. The night skies in the middle of nowhere that make you feel like maybe, just maybe, the stars are working themselves out.

Dreamy black pumps so versatile you can wear with anything between jeans and a little black dress. The stories you will write in them. How they start to become more comfortable, how they start to wear, but it doesn’t make you sad. The little scratches and knicks they acquire and only remind you of things you don’t want to forget. A new life, a different you, walking around, making her own way.

Friday nights in with books that keep your hands anxious to turn the page. The kind that make you lose sleep, finally laying your head down at 4 a.m. dreaming about what you just read. The characters in them that make you see things inside yourself you never did.

Time alone that makes you realize solitude is sometimes not only necessary, but beautiful.

New recipes that satisfy your appetite and feed your soul. Good wine with good people. Good wine alone in a bubble bath.

Evenings blasting music and getting ready with your friends. Lipstick stained wine glasses. The mirrors that will bear witness to the moments you start discovering and liking more about yourself. Saturday nights downtown, the buzzing like neon inside in your veins. The crowded bars. The dancing until you go numb. The sweat. The late nights that turn into early mornings. The cathartic heart-to-hearts with the people you love the most.

First dates. That high before and after a first kiss. How you can feel celestial bodies in space colliding, yet the world has stopped spinning, and for a few seconds, everything feels so still. The way the hairs on your every pore stand up, as foreign lips make their way closer and closer to your face. That smile that always follows after. How alive it all makes you feel.

More time alone. For introspection. To reflect. To unwind. To do things you love that will quiet your mind. To get into touch with yourself. To meditate. Or simply just because.

Orgasms. By your own hand. With someone new. Orgasms so unlike anything that came before them. Orgasms accompanied by some sort of sexual enlightenment.

Experiences. Internal fulfillment.

The discovering of not only the things that make you happy, but the things that don’t.

New sheets that make you feel lighter when you lay in them. Like you just cleaned a pile of dust accumulating in a corner of the kitchen. The way they feel so soft on your skin and make you think about how sometimes the unfamiliar can be holy.

There is magic in the unknown.

Seek sunsets that make you realize sometimes endings only mean beautiful beginnings.

Songs that heal more than trying to get closure ever could.

It’s all a myth, closure, it doesn’t exist. It’s an excuse to hang on to the past. It’s looking for external validation. Sometimes chasing it is only looking to hurt more. The way that they left is closure enough. Closure doesn’t sound at all like a door closing. Closure never reads like a final page. There is no loud thud of a heavy book being slammed shut. Closure is more like quicksand. More like pulling you into what you should be walking away from. You’ve had closure this whole time. You had closure when they left, you just didn’t like the way it felt.

Closure only comes with letting go. Letting go starts with not looking back.

Seek the person you’ve always been, who you were before them, who you are after them. The chaos, the calm that comes after them. All the infinite new things.

Seek yourself instead.