Dear —,

Our relationship was a very… dynamic one, to put it positively. Before we met each other, we were both walking minefields looking for someone who would release our explosives.

Luckily, we found each other. Not a single moment of boredom existed. That’s the good news. And the bad. We were stripping off our skins and grinding our raw nerve systems into one another.

What particularly annoyed me was that you never compromised. Most people "mature" their expectations to dodge serious confrontations, sometimes by telling mild lies. You didn't (in my eyes and ears). I couldn't keep facing a person who was always filled with raw energy and also not changing her behavior according to external expectations at all. I started avoiding you, which meant making excuses or sometimes not talking to you at all. Our relationship naturally degraded.

Fast forward to the present day; now when I form a relationship, anything from a casual conversation to a serious one, I try to make it work by being as sincere as I can be. I don't want to repeat the mistake I made, which was to fake the relationship out of fear.

Or am I trying to learn from the "mistake"? Being sincere to one another is, after all, about being "true." In other words, I am constantly asking myself: "Am I presenting myself as I am?"

And that is exactly what you were doing when we were together. You were always you, no matter what.

After all, I have been learning from you, not "mistakes." I probably do not copy your behavior, but I do take your deeper intention and apply it as my everyday philosophy. You tried to teach me hundreds of things and I learned none (from your point of view). But this one, something you taught me unknowingly, is what I am keeping in my heart. It has been staying with me, also unknowingly (until now) and it will do so for some time—maybe for good.

Now I feel closer to the days we spent, although we still might be oceans apart in many aspects (literally there is an ocean between us).

Enough of mumbling. Today, this is what I just want to say: Thank you.