Do you set personal goals for yourself?

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One hundred blog posts.

(Technically, 100. It’s only my 82nd, if we’re being precise, as those others don’t truly count. Not really. Not if it’s from Before.) Still, that feels like a big number, one that oughta mean I’ve arrived someplace.

I could write about the book I just published, all that grief I poured into it, or the many things I’ve learned about myself and my daddy along the way. But here I am, still thinking about closure. Or, if we’re being really-really precise, the utter impossibleness of letting go of something that doesn’t feel finished.

I’ve always been an all-or-nothing kinda person. Halfway doesn’t sit right. I like answers, explanations, reasons. I want to know why something happened, what I might’ve misunderstood, whether there was something I could’ve done differently.

Even once I’ve found an answer, I want to understand that better, too. Preferably from every possible angle, until there’s nothing left to question. (All of which y’all must know about me, by now.) As y’all might imagine, that makes the prospect of leaving something unresolved pretty damn terrifying. Especially when the thing you’re trying to resolve involves another person. Or several people.

I’ve written_^[1] about this before. Many times, actually. (Surprise, surprise.)

I knew from the beginning—this was where our story would inevitably end—me and my daddy’s, anyhow. He’s dead. No matter how thoroughly I examine our past, how many records I uncover, or how carefully I reconstruct the years leading up to his death, I can never ask him what I still want to know. For years, I thought that understanding the thing would help me make peace with what happened. If I could untangle every knot, perhaps I’d finally stop blaming myself.

I can explain^_[2] everything with remarkable confidence now. I’ve written a whole book about it, for fuck’s sake.

Dad can’t answer me. Other people could, if they wanted to. There’s one person in particular I’ve been thinking about lately, especially now. Someone who once loomed large in my life, though I won’t name her here for reasons both ethical and legal. (I’d prefer not to have my memoir moonlight as Exhibit A.)

I’ve spent a lot of time imagining what I’d ask her if we ever had the chance to sit down together. What do you remember? What do you see, looking back at those years we both survived? Did you feel as helpless as I did? Did you see sides of Dad that I never got to see? How much of what we believed about each other came from our own experiences, and how much came from the stories we were told? I don’t know. That’s the whole problem.

When I was real young, I held a great deal of animosity toward her. Some of it was a child’s attempt to make sense of a situation she couldn’t fully understand, and some of it was earned. I won’t pretend otherwise just because I’ve grown older and acquired a more complicated perspective. But I can’t blame her for how things went down back when I was a kid. This experience has taught me too much about Dad for that to make sense. She was caught up in his drama too.

I can’t tell her story for her.

With my memoir now out in the world, I think about what it might be like for her to encounter my experience of those years. I worry that she might feel blindsided or hurt. Not because I believe I’ve been unfair—I worked real hard to be fair—but because I know there are parts of the story I couldn’t possibly see from where I stood.

I don’t expect her recollections to match mine perfect. Surely, they won’t. I’d still want to know. Perhaps, more selfishly, I want her to understand that I’m not trying to win anything or prove my version of events as the only correct one.

With Dad gone, there’s no one left to fight over. (Not that I ever wanted to fight in the first place.) There’s no trophy for being the person who suffered most, or for having the more convincing story. There are just two people who lived through some of the same years and came away with experiences neither can fully know from the other’s side.

I don’t need her to agree with me about everything. I just wish we could understand each other a little better.

Now, I’ve said before that nobody owes me an explanation. I still believe that. People have the right to decide what parts of their lives they’re willing to revisit, what questions they’re comfortable answering, and whether they want to have a conversation at all. I have that same right. I don’t think wanting to understand someone gives me the authority to demand their help in doing it. But my gods, how I wish knowing that made the wanting disappear.

I don’t know whether that conversation would settle anything. Maybe I’d leave with more questions than I brought. I’d still like to have it. The real problem is that I’ve been treating moving on and letting go as though they mean the same thing.

And despite everything I’ve learned, I still catch myself treating unanswered questions as unfinished responsibilities. As though something remains on my personal to-do list until I’ve investigated every possibility, explained myself to everyone involved, and figured out exactly what went wrong. But some things simply can’t be completed through individual effort.

I still want to understand the parts of my past that don’t make sense, and I still really want that convo. I don’t know whether we’ll ever have it, and I know that isn’t up to me alone. What I haven’t figured out is how to leave something unfinished without feeling like I’ve given up on it.

[1] I’ve written about how confession isn’t closure, how silence doesn’t necessarily protect anyone, and how exhausting it is to keep searching for an answer long after you’ve exhausted the evidence.

[2] Unfortunately, there’s a rather large difference between knowing something is true and actually believing it. That’s yet another thing I’ve already written about recently, after rediscovering a video I’d saved more than ten years ago.

inspo: realizing that understanding has limits, and so does my ability to obtain it // wondering what happens when I’ve understood as much as I can and still care // slowly learning that closure doesn’t require me to stop caring // (trying to) accept that somebody may never explain their choices // wondering what to do with the part of me that keeps reaching backward // learning to live with important conversations that may never happen // maybe my next personal goal oughta be learning how to leave things unfinished without feeling like I’ve failed // trouble is, I don’t know how I’d measure progress when the whole point is learning to live without a definite ending // mostly, trying to distinguish between wanting something resolved and needing it resolved before I can move forward.

Kinsey Keys

aspiring memoirist rummaging through my noggin, stubbornly clutching the past to my chest like it’s a newborn babe starved for mother's milk.

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