Well, I did it.

I survived being a teenager. Actually, it's thanks to you. You were just the kick in the backside that I needed to grow. Now I'm well on my way to being a fully functioning adult. I'm still an overgrown child in some ways, but thanks to you I'm strong enough not to throw my life away for such a trivial reason. It was hard and it took a long time, but no pain, no gain right?

I was such a stunted person ten years ago, I couldn't function, and I was borderline insane. All I cared about was myself, my ambition and imagination. All I did was use people to get what I want, even when I didn't realise it. You were a resource to make me more like the person I wanted to be. My feeble attempts at emotional manipulation involved lying to you and myself about feelings I never really had. All I had was my greed.

I was fifteen, and even for a fifteen year old I was such a moron. Everyone and everything was screaming at me not to do what I was doing, and I didn't even listen or see the writing on the wall. I brought it all on myself and I still demanded sympathy. I even thought you were the one who went crazy, not me. That somehow I wasn't the one at fault. It was so shameful, I don't deserve to keep it a secret. People deserve to know just how retarded I was.

I think I understand what you were trying to do, all those years ago. You were trying to teach me a lesson by putting me through exactly what happened to you. I'm not as strong as you were. I never was. I couldn't stand being overshadowed by someone whose life was so much more dangerous and exciting, and was the center of attention for being a much greater person than I was. Someone special who shone so very brightly.

It hurt my ego so much. And because there's a different between ego and self esteem, all I wanted was to do away with my flawed self and replace it with a copy of you. And it was a mistake I'd make again with somebody else before I learned my lesson. I'm not even sure I learned my lesson until recently. I'm pretty hopeless like that.

One lesson I've learned though is that online friends aren't as important as real life ones. I want to live in the real world and not be so dependent on talking to people through a computer screen. Even if I have about the same chance as a blind man completing a crossword, I'm not going to give up.

I don't know where you are now, and I highly doubt you'd ever forgive me for what I was and what I did. But that person is gone now. It's been ten years since the day I started to live for myself by rejecting my selfish desires and choosing to walk my own path. Like President Thomas J. Whitmore I decided I would not go quietly into the night. I may never be as good and noble a person as you were, but at least I can try to reinterpret those things I admired in a way that suits me better.

It's for these reasons that I can better tell when to let go of things that are holding me back, things that I would have clung desperately to for so many years. I remember when you once told me that insanity was for those who can't cope. You were the one who gave me the first push in the direction of sanity. Thank you.

So I decided to draw a character who knows what it's like to lose someone entirely through their own terrible mistakes. In colours that only I will know the significance of. This is a last, final gift for the past, for the scared and confused child who didn't understand what he did wrong. This picture will not be remembered, and the memory of everything that started this can finally begin to fade away, as the agony of every tragedy should. It's time to put this to rest. This ends, for all of us.

End communication.