If you’re anything like me, chances are you’ve been in a situation that didn’t end up exactly the way you want it to—whether it be a bad break-up, a guy not texting you when you had expectations he would, or your professor giving you a bad grade on a free-response essay. After going through the denial stage, you might be left wondering why. Why did he not call me? Why did this end so badly? As a result, people search for answers. We like loose ends being tied up. We like when things aren’t messy. People like closure.

Closure. One word. Lots of problems. Closure is really hard to find. Usually when people look for closure they want to find something they’ll never get. They want the perfect ending that they never got. They want answers. Sometimes getting closure is just part of getting over something, but more often than not, people never seem to get the closure that they need or want. It’s a vicious cycle of searching for something that you may never find.

Closure is a hard thing because sometimes the right answer, or the answer that you’re looking for, just isn’t there. Accepting that is the hardest part. Accepting that you might never get closure is the real closure.

I have found the truth in this in many situations, but especially in relationships. You might think that moving on quickly, pursuing someone new, or not dealing with your feelings will help you get over things; it usually will fill the void temporarily, but eventually you will be left in the same spot you were to begin with. You’ll still want answers. In reality, it’s your own strength and self-worth that will get you there.

If something didn’t turn out the way that you had hoped, have the self-respect to realize that the situation sucks. And no matter how hard it might be to accept, closure may never happen. Having the self-respect and self-worth to move on with your life without closure, and without the messy loose ends being tied up, is what makes a person grow. It’s what makes a person better and stronger.

The new closure is no closure at all. It’s the strength to say that you don’t need it to move on, and that you can take things in stride and learn from them. Not getting closure is the universe’s way of telling you to leave that bad experience in the past and move forward. It’s telling you to be confident that something better will come along, and that you don’t need someone else’s words or validation to get past bad times.

Learning to let go of the bad, as hard as it may be, and search for the good in life is hard. It’s the people and experiences that make you do that that are really the best experiences after all. It forces you to get to your lowest, only to rebuild yourself up to higher than you were before. And that’s the best closure of all.