Letters to Viv: Closing the Year and the Doors That Needed Closing
The version of closure that doesn’t require an audience or an explanation.
Letters to Viv
Open, soul-packed letters to the kind of human I write for: the curious, creative, exhausted by the hustle, and craving something more. I’m writing to you (and me).
Dear Viv,
December arrived with that strange hush it carries every year.
A pause. A dimmer switch. A little space to look around and actually see what the last twelve months have done to us.
I’ve been sitting in it.
Looking back, looking forward, the small surprises that come up when things finally slow down.
It hit me that it has been a year and a half since everything shifted. That still feels wild. The math doesn’t match the way the memories sit in my body. Some feel like yesterday. Others feel like a past life.
This season has me walking through the rooms of the last eighteen months, taking note of what is still here and what has left. The marriage is one piece of it, sure, though it isn’t the only place where endings echo. Family dynamics changed. Certain friendships thinned out. Places I once called home no longer feel like mine.
It all feels like growing up in a way I didn’t expect at forty-six. A maturing that has nothing to do with age. More like waking up to the truth that closure isn’t something I negotiate with other people.
Closure for me has become an internal shift, not a shared conversation. No ceremony, no final scene or tidy exchange to make everything feel symmetrical. The old idea of closure was so performative. I kept thinking I needed someone else to confirm the ending before I could move on.
This year taught me something different.
The ending is real the moment I stop feeding energy into what has already dissolved.
I don’t owe anyone explanations, nor do I owe them softness to make the exit easier.
I definitely don’t owe them a final chapter where I sit across from them and wrap things up.
I can choose to close the door because my spirit says it’s time.
Simple. Quiet. Firm.
A decision, not a dialogue.
That’s the part that feels like adulthood. Real adulthood.
The kind where boundaries settle into your bones, and you finally understand that walking away doesn’t require permission or applause.
So as the year folds in on itself and a new one waits at the edge, I’m letting this be my version of closure.
Not dramatic or loud.
More like turning off a light in a room I no longer need.
XO,
Tanya