When closure isn't mutual

What it feels like to leave before the conversation is over.

I tell my therapist that this will be our last session. I’ve decided to move.

“But how will I get closure?” she asked, then seemed to catch herself. This isn’t about her, she must have remembered.

Her hurt stays with me, not the months we spent dissecting my patterns, my need to run, the way I keep trading cities instead of facing myself. If she had been paying attention, she might have seen this coming. Maybe she did, and just hoped I wouldn’t follow through.

Much later, I still think about her reaction. How she seemed more wounded than surprised. Or maybe she wasn’t used to people walking away without explanation. I think about the other relationships I’ve ended abruptly, doors I’ve shut and never reopened, and wonder if they, too, were left holding a quiet ache, and I just didn’t care how they felt about me leaving.

I didn’t think about any of this for a long time. Then, life presented it again to the surface.

When my husband and I snapped at each other last week over something insignificant, I suggested, gently, that maybe we should see a marriage therapist. The kind of suggestion that is really a question, a hand extended.

He looked at me like I’d said something completely unexpected. Not angry. Just surprised. Confused. As if I had invented the tension out of thin air. “Why don’t we both go think of three things we can try harder to do to make each other’s lives easier,” he said, “and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

It wasn’t meant to be cruel or dismissive. Action is his first language. Reflection is mine. We often miss each other in the translation. But his response made me feel even more alone with my anger. Instead of talking it through, I went to bed without him and shut the door.

I once asked my dad what he thought about therapy. He shrugged and said, “What can’t you fix with a bottle of vodka and some good friends?” A very Russian answer. He sees someone now, of course. Life has a sense of humor like that.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been dipping back into self-help books and the idea of going to therapy. Trying to understand the pieces of me that flare up at the smallest things. Trying to catch the moment before I snap. Trying to be more present, to notice the candle flame, the crackle of my knuckles, the dance of carbonated water in my mouth. It sounds simple. It isn’t. Which brings me back to Rosalyn.

The therapist in Los Angeles looked uncannily like my ex-boyfriend’s mother. Same age, same big hair, same gentle Jewishness that both comforted and unsettled me. I told her that once, how she resembled the woman who insisted I wasn’t right for her son. She asked to see a photo.

Back then, going to therapy wasn’t about rehashing that relationship. I was there because I felt lost and couldn’t figure out a direction for my life. Passion, vocation, purpose. All the big words that felt too large to hold.

“I wish I could give you career advice,” she told me once, and I could see the truth in her eyes. She wanted to tell me it’s okay not to know. That she had reinvented herself late in life. That some answers take decades. But I didn’t want to wait. I wanted clarity. A map. A direction.

So when I told her I was moving, she looked stricken. “But how will I get closure?” she asked.

It took me a long time to understand that what she meant was: how will we close this loop? How will we honor the work? But at the time, all I heard was need. Her need. And I wasn’t sure what to do with that.

I’d already packed my apartment. I was leaving LA within the week. Staying longer felt like delaying the inevitable. She wanted a therapist’s ending. I wanted a clean exit.

We said goodbye anyway. She friended me on LinkedIn a few months later, which I still don’t know how to interpret. Maybe curiosity or pride. Maybe she wanted to keep tabs to see whether I ever figured out what I wanted. Sometimes I wonder the same.

And I think about if I left a mark on her, the way her question left one on me. Maybe I was her first abrupt goodbye. Perhaps I reminded her of someone she couldn’t help. Maybe we both learned something from my leaving.