Hey -- so I tend to get sucked down these rabbit holes online when I can't sleep. A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for an old email address in my Gmail archives and I came across an email from you that led me to another email and then another one and then a Gchat transcript and then links to posts on my now defunct Tumblr page.

Sorry, I'm having trouble getting to the point -- mainly because I've had a lot of points swirling around my brain for awhile, and I'm not sure which one is the most articulate for me to write down right now. Maybe none of them are.

The reason I'm writing this is because I'm turning 27 tomorrow. This is significant because -- well, let me rewind a bit first.

You see, when you died last year, I had been going through a really rough time already. I felt like I was losing purpose and losing motivation, but I was sitting there on the edge of every possible opportunity and thinking out loud, "I'm ready for my life to change," and that was something I hadn't done in actually quite some time. The last time was in 2012 when I got on that bus and moved to New York with borrowed money and anxieties so large you could see them from space.

But you knew about that because we talked a lot about it. You told me when I saw you at the time that I was supposed to GTFO and do something big, and that when I was your age (26 going on 27), I wouldn't regret any of it.

That first year was exhausting and exhilarating, and we emailed and chatted a lot about how exhausting and exhilarating everything was for the both of us. But I'm sitting here, 26 going on 27, a little more than four years after I GTFO-ed and did that big thing, and you were right.

I just wanted you to know that you were right.

Anyways, so a lot of stuff has changed over the last few months, and it's still changing, and now rather than thinking, "This is the point where I'm ready for life to go from being one thing to another," I'm just going to keep doing things -- big things -- until I explode. I think you'll be proud.

Lots of love,
TGL