Closure: Finding the First Page of the Story
Closure isn't from others; it's reclaiming your unaltered story. Go back compassionately to the beginning, understand the origin, and finally release the weight.
I was on night shift at the hospital recently, doing what nurses usually do when patients are discharged: rewriting the TPR (temperature, pulse, respiration) record so the present-day entries look clean. It was late, that tired kind of late where your handwriting starts slanting and your mind just wants to lie down somewhere and be still for a moment.
As I copied one of the diagnoses into the new record, something felt off. The spelling didn’t look like the original word anymore. It wasn’t wrong medically, but the word had changed shape. Out of curiosity, I turned back to the previous day. A different spelling. I turned back again. Another version. And again.
With each page I turned back, the mistake reduced, almost as if I were peeling back layers to reveal what was true beneath. The spellings were like fingerprints of fatigue. Each nurse had quietly adjusted the word: moved a letter here, replaced a letter there, reshaped it into what made sense to them in that moment. Until I reached the very first entry.
There it was. One clean, correctly spelled diagnosis. Untouched. Clear. It took just one tired hand on one tired night for the truth to shift slightly, and everyone after that copied the version they met, not the original. Over time, the real spelling almost disappeared.
Heal What Really Happened
It made me realize how often this happens with the stories we carry in our hearts. The very first version of an experience is usually the most honest. But as time passes, emotions enter. Pride enters. Self-protection enters. Other people add their comments, their interpretations, their warnings, their “you know what I think happened?” We replay the moment in our heads and, without even noticing, we begin to edit the memory.
By the time we finally say, “I just need closure,” we are no longer holding the original experience. We are holding the altered version—the added pain, the meanings we attached to survive it, the parts others contributed, and the stories we told ourselves to cope.
Just like that diagnosis, what we call our truth has passed through too many tired hands, including our own. And sometimes, we are trying to heal a version of the story that is not even accurate anymore.
Find the Freedom of Understanding
People often discourage going back to the beginning of a situation. “Just move on.” “Don’t open old wounds.” “Leave the past in the past.” But moving on from a distorted story doesn’t bring closure. It brings either numbness or confusion disguised as strength. You cannot clean a wound by covering it. You cannot repaint a wall that is moldy underneath and expect the mold to disappear. If the root isn’t addressed, it will show up again.
Closure is not dredging up the past. Closure is about going back carefully to find where things actually started, not the version you met after pain had already changed it. It is about separating what truly happened from what the subsequent journey did to the memory of it. Going back to the first page is not the same as reopening the wound. It is simply acknowledging the original truth before everything else piled on top.
Think of it the way we approach tough examinations. There is a different kind of confidence that comes from truly understanding a topic instead of cramming the night before. When all you did was memorize the textbook, the moment an examiner twists the question, panic sets in because it no longer looks familiar. But when you understand a topic deeply, you can recognize it in any form. No matter how the question is framed, you can break it down, find your footing, and answer with clarity. Understanding gives you freedom. It removes fear. It brings peace because you know you are not guessing.
In the same way, when you understand the origin of your pain, the situation loses its power over you. Even if the memory shows up differently later—through a trigger, a conversation, or a new experience—you will not crumble. You recognize it. You know where it came from. You can face it. That is what makes release possible. Understanding gives you back your authority.
Journey Back to the Beginning
Many of us wait for closure to come from another person, through an apology, a conversation, an explanation, or by their taking accountability. But some people will not give you closure because they do not see the story the way you do. They were living a different internal experience. Closure is not always a dialogue. Sometimes it is a personal decision. You look back, you find where the story changed, you acknowledge how it affected you, and then you release it with clarity. It is not forgetting. It is freeing.
If something in you is still unsettled, maybe the story you are holding is no longer the truth; it is just the version that survived. Maybe what you need is not a new ending but a return to the first page. Not to relive the pain, but to see it clearly, so you can finally put the book down without your heart feeling unfinished.
Sometimes going back to the beginning simply means sitting with yourself and being honest about what truly hurt you. Not the version you told others, not the version pride edited, and not the version pain exaggerated. Just the quiet truth of what your heart felt in that first moment. It is allowing yourself to name it without sugarcoating or minimizing it. Often enough, that alone removes half the weight.
Going back can also look like separating your voice from the voices that got involved afterwards. What did you feel before others analyzed it for you? What was your own interpretation before someone told you what they thought it meant? Sometimes closure requires clearing out the noise so you can hear yourself again. The story began with you, so your voice deserves to be heard again.
When you go back, carry compassion for the version of yourself who lived that moment. You are not returning to blame yourself for how you reacted or to judge what you did not know. You go back to meet yourself with understanding. To say, “I see why this hurt the way it did.” To hold that younger version of you gently, not critically. That soft acknowledgement is what loosens the grip of the memory. It tells your heart, “You can breathe now.”
Closure is not the end of a story. Closure is finding the original sentence that changed everything and understanding it well enough to let it go.
by Pascaline Odogwu
