Dear T,
When we first met, it wasn't love at first sight. Sorry, but it wasn't your beauty what captivated me the most. Easygoing, curious about this (at that time) young and insolent guy from a country named Spain. You didn't like everything about me (who does?), but you were always asking me all sorts of questions. You were trying to understand my world. At the same time, I was fascinated by yours. You welcomed my curiosity most of the time. And there was an excitement for our differences from both parts. Although you always tried to understand me as "a foreigner" (american, canadian, british, australian, more or less... the difference between race and nationality was not so obvious for you... there was a long way to go...), you realized soon that not all the white guys are the same. Not everybody comes here to study or to teach english. The truth is, for me, everything is about pulse, challenge, feelings. That's enough.
Funny, isn't it? I listened to your constant speeches about education, career, money (lots of money) for... the future. Always the future. It was almost outrageous for you to hear that none of those things ever bothered me at all... but again, the truth is that you had a bit shallow (or maybe just naive) curiosity about me. But from my part, i was here to join the game. You wanted answers to every question. And I just wanted to learn about you, to experience things through your point of view.
You were the kind of girlfriend that could give me new reasons to keep on going. Let's admit too that most of the time, it was due to my self-motivation. I learnt how to deal with our differences. And that made me extremely flexible. I realized that very few things are truly important: love, health... and, oh, money.
What is love? What I learnt from you about love in these 6 years would be too long to explain in this letter. It completely changed my life. But if i have to pick a description about love right now, i would say: i learnt how to love an imperfect reality, the present. And i made peace with the past. And i even learnt how to enjoy future plans for short-mid term.
Life was quite easy with you. And we had a lot of fun. Crazy times back in the days. And also some stuff about self-discipline, maturity and wisdom could be told here. Only when i had stupid and ambitious thoughts, i didn't entirely appreciate our comfortable life, the long path we walked together (maybe someone more beautiful, more famous, richer, etc). I thought that maybe i was missing something out there. But from what i heard from other people around during these uncertain days, i could feel blessed for having you.
It was great the day that i realized what i could exactly expect from "us". At that point, no complaints. I had to adjust myself to the situation and i did it with pleasure. Only then i found out that i missed maybe a bit too much of myself during the journey. Cause i needed to know how could be our future together (look, now seems that the future starts worrying me, cause i am not a 27 years old lifer anymore... long time), then i pushed myself to the limit. Then i saw clearly where my limits are. That enriched me infinitely as a human being. And it was so hard to get there, that i totally lost interest on stopping myself.
Now i have to tell you: what i am about to start is just the consequence about that desire of going ahead. Definitely, she is not better than you. You are polite, tolerant and all that. She is tricky and hard to handle. But again, i was never affraid of such things. I am not as sharp as before, cause it was not needed beside you. Anyway, i will improvise, as usual. :)
She was born on the sand, under the sun, beside the blue ocean. You keep an umbrella open over your head to protect you from the constant rain and the sunlight too. This is a big and developed city, but your flavour reminds me to something from the countryside, strangely mixed together with outdated aristocatic manners similar to some from my own country half century ago. And she is wild. You are easygoing... till... well... till you care. Then you both are the same. She is chinese, by the way.
And the reason why i am doing this is because the world i belong to is imperfect, unsafe, full of traps everywhere. You don't represent any of those words. You are unreal.
Would a tiger prefer living in the wild jungle or enjoying a comfortable life in a zoo (but a big one, like a playground)? At the end, i can say that i know both. And i don't care. It's funny, cause you also showed me how to be carefree towards the unknown (well, not exactly you, but what i needed to achieve in order to get at this point is what made me like this). That leaded me to you first, and now it's separating us. Cause the journey never ends.
I must go now, but we both know that our issues won't create bad feelings between us. I plan to visit you once in a while. I know that you will always welcome me with that (then incomprensible, now so familiar) mixture of distant politeness and carefree approach. And you can`t resist to a good story. But next time we see each other, I promise you that it won't be about tears or disappointments anymore. Everytime we see each other again, we will only have great fun together.
