"There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask, 'What if I fall?'
Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?"
- Erin Hanson

I've been meaning to write to you for a long time, but the words never felt good enough. I've been working on this letter for a long time, probably longer than I should have, but it's leaving me exposed and vulnerable; raw, and yet, seemingly complete. I've never been one to seek out closure or an explanation because you don't owe me anything, and I owe you nothing in return. This is simply my final farewell to all of our memories, all of our laughter, all of our tears, and most of all, all of the love we shared for one another.

At one point in time, you were a light in my life. You were the shelter I sought for during hurricanes of grief and the home I felt most comfortable in. You provided a kind of safety I may never get back, and that's okay. It was time for me to learn to find safety within myself, anyways.

I was lost within the world for a long time, and you know that better than anyone. Sometimes, admittedly, I still feel lost without you. After all this time, I still look to you for past wisdom, for guidance, for support, and most times I am left with nothing. This is to no fault of your own, as I have placed this on myself. My heart is still heavy with the love I hold for you and for the weight of the burn I felt when we parted ways. Sometimes, I can feel it digging its way to my spine to settle there.

But, I want to thank you, most of all. When we were together, we were unstoppable. We were strong, and powerful, and so full of love it was overwhelming. We swore on forever, we made plans of the future and all it would hold for us, but nobody saw our downfall coming. Well, perhaps maybe you did, but I certainly was blind sided with the loss of you. I felt sadness, despair, resentment, and abandonment all at once and it created a disaster out of me. I questioned myself for weeks, growing angry with who I was, begging any Gods out there to answer why people made it look so easy to leave me.

Over time, though, I came to realize that you never abandoned me -- not really. Your physical presence may be absent from my life, but you left marks on me that I will never be able to scrub clean. Instead, you have done nothing more than push me forward to make me realize that people will come and go and that that is alright. Not every loss is abandonment and it's unfair to me, and especially to you, that my trauma had instilled that belief in me.

I will admit that I was not the best person I could have been to you. There were things I did wrong, words that I should not have said, and emotions I did not work through properly. I became dependent on you and it wasn't fair of me to do so. I became unkind and unwilling to listen to others' point of views.

Losing you changed that. Instead of falling stagnant and remaining grounded in my ignorance, I decided to work on being the best possible version of myself everyday. There has not been a day that has gone by since you left that I have not contemplated my actions, my stubbornness, and my way of life, especially in regards to activism. I realized that the way I hurt when we parted was not a feeling I wanted to experience again.

Your ability to let go of me when we loved so passionately, so deeply, set me free in many ways I am incapable of explaining. I have started my road to recovery, not only because I needed to, but because your tenderness towards my mental health made me acknowledge that it must have been frustrating to constantly deal with someone as depressed as I was. You were gentle to me even when I didn't deserve it, even when I gave you every reason to blow a gasket and leave me to rot in my own selfishness. There is bravery in being soft, and you showed me just how brave you were every single day.

Gods, losing you made me realize what kind of person I want to be. You made me realize that I can look at a world that hates me for everything that I am and still choose love and compassion above all else.

I'm sorry for everything I've put you through, truly. We were polar opposites that lived in a sewer of my toxic waste and still tried to make it worse. I'm thankful that you let go because you didn't deserve any of it. And, perhaps I am exaggerating how awful I was to you, but I am only just beginning to realize that even if I never physically harmed you, my actions were still continuing the cycle of my abuse. I do not expect forgiveness in the slightest, but I do want you to know that being let go was one of the best things to happen to me.

You released me from a cage I had built for myself to keep intruders out. You gave me the hope and the resilience to keep pushing when times were hard. I wish nothing but happiness, love, and light in your future because you were truly the best person I could have asked for.

Because of you, I am living the best possible version of my life right now. Maybe you'll read this, and maybe you won't, but I hope you know that you deserve the world and more, and that I'm sorry I couldn't be the one to give it to you.