I’m not someone who can be considered a role model for expressing oneself and owning your emotions. In fact, until recently my motto was to keep any hurt and pain bottled up inside myself and find a way to deal with all of it on my own.

When rifts began to form between myself and other people, closure seemed to be achievable only through blocking phone numbers and social media pages. I thought people were something that could be quit cold turkey.

But recently I found myself reaching out to someone I’d tried to cut off, because they were someone I still wondered about to the point that they completely clouded my thoughts.

Finally, I put everything out in the open and they did the same. Once I had the answers I’d been looking for, this person slowly stopped invading my mind. This is what closure should actually feel like. Closure does not mean still being completely entangled with thoughts of the person who hurt you.

I’d previously used the cold turkey strategy on friends I once considered close, on guys I was interested in and on people who ended up being toxic to my well-being. If I was hurting, I cut them out. No questions asked, no chances to look back. I thought it’d be easier if I had no chance to reach out to them and therefore could not open any old wounds I’d attempted to close.

I wouldn’t be putting myself in harm’s way, at least that was how I viewed it at the time. But the thing I’ve learned recently is that, in some situations, closure can’t be achieved through blocked phone numbers alone.

Because I’d still have questions that needed answers. I’d still want to know why that person hurt me, or whether this person genuinely cared at all. And I’d often still find myself worrying about their well-being, even though I was hurt.

If you need answers from someone, the only way to fully close that wound is to ask them the questions that still keep you awake at night.

I was still wondering about these people, so I did not truly have closure. Closure means finally being able to leave a person or situation behind in its entirety, and closure means that it doesn’t continue to affect your life on a large scale.

People always look better in retrospect and the memories are always happier and more pure. Sometimes, when looking back on your time with a person, it’s a lot harder to see the ways they hurt you because you’re too busy missing how good they had made you feel once upon a time.

But you’ll finally have closure when you get the answers to questions you were once too afraid to ask.

Casey Holland is the opinion editor at The State News. Reach her at cholland@statenews.com.