To go forward is not to avoid looking backwards but to not be riled up when you do. Few take years to learn this, many take decades, and some never learn it. To look at something without it grabbing your living soul and dragging it out of your body is the strict definition of closure, but what is closed now was once open. It is okay if the latch is finicky and the lid leaves a gap when it closes. That is the thing about closing something; it can always be opened again. And sometimes, when you have walked far away and look back to see how far you’ve come, by some twisted trick of time, you will find you have not walked at all. It is okay if that happens; you turn back and continue walking. The human body was designed to walk long distances, and there is no road longer than the road of time.
There is a tiny jewelled box, one of a kind, with the most beautiful, masterful engraving on it resting over the cupboards in my heart. Lodged behind many cardboard boxes with labels and few without them, it lies wrapped under tarp and rags. It tends to be knocked over at the slightest nudge. Sometimes, it only peeks out of the pieces of cloth. Often, it falls down, and the lock is so broken that everything in it spills out, and I pick the trinkets up, lock it again and keep it in the farthest corner, away from where I can see it.
As it is with things that are important to us, we cannot truly forget them. And so, the box will fall now and then, and in routine, fastidious as I am, I will tidy up and tuck it back where it fell from, and over and over this will happen. Only it will not sink my heart anymore. Closure is not the closing of things once and for all. It is the opening and closing of boxes over and over again.
Everything that was once opened and stitched close can now be opened up again. It does not matter if it is an old bag, a cardboard box or your heart where it bled. Everything open can always be closed up again.
What is life but the constant opening of boxes, jewelled or otherwise, telling yourself: do you remember this day? Closure is saying this without your world tearing at its seams. But it must be opened and closed again; memories gather dust quickly.