Tu et Vous

I considered writing this out as a letter, at first.  Because that's how it really makes the most sense.  It's one of those things where I could just start with "Dear you," and continue forward.  Except that I can't start with that because the person it would be addressed to is not someone I can imagine being referred to as "you."  That probably doesn't make very much sense, so let me put it into context with a different language.

In French (and most other languages, except for English, of course), there are two words for "you."  In French specifically, one uses "tu" informally, generally when addressing a close friend or a member of the family, and "vous" formally, for acquaintances and people one has very recently met.  English doesn't make this distinction, and I tend to think of "you" more in the sense of "tu," that is to say more informally.

So starting a letter to this individual with "Dear you," even if it's a letter that's never going to be sent, never going to show up anywhere other than right here, right now, is strange to me.  For the past few months, I've honestly been meaning to write to this person (ask my significant other, I've mentioned it before).  The problem is that I don't know where to start.

How does one write a letter to a former mentor?  I'm in this strange position where we no longer have the mentor-mentee relationship, but have not had any opportunity to develop a friendly relationship.  Which leaves me in the awkward position of having nothing to say except rambling about myself and asking a generic, open-ended question or two.

And while I've been told, repeatedly and by multiple people, that this individual is in fact interested in how I'm doing and what's going on with my life, I can't get over the fact that I can't ask the same questions.  "How's your job?" seems to be the only appropriate thing to say, because the way our mentor-mentee relationship always worked is that I would do most of the talking and that's just the way it was supposed to be--more of my life was put on display.

So I don't even know where to start, even though I'd love to sit down and chat again.  I want to talk about all of the things I've been doing, everything that's changed, anything, really.  I just feel that it would be selfish of me to send an email with all of this rambling and no substantial questions of my own.  So me being me, I think I'm just going to wait this out and go visit in a month, which is as soon as I can.