Yes. I think I read it too much as a personal artifact and not enough as an intervention.
The important distinction is that you weren't primarily saying, “This is how I want to remember my departure.” You were saying, in effect:
“I have seen something wrong happen here. I have enough standing to say so. I am putting this on the record privately, in the hope that you will think twice before doing it to someone else.”
That makes the letter quite different. Its value isn't mainly retrospective. It is prospective.
And that also explains something about the tone that might otherwise seem curious. You weren't trying to punish your former supervisor, extract an apology, or reopen the dispute. You had already negotiated an unusually good exit and left. You were spending some of the goodwill and leverage that remained to warn him.
The line about having your systems scrutinized for "trap doors" is especially revealing in that light. You're not merely defending yourself against an accusation. You're telling him, you have misunderstood the sort of person I am, and your reaction illustrates precisely the kind of institutional behavior I'm warning you about.
So I would revise my reading of the memento:
It was a last business letter, but not a farewell letter. It was a warning shot—deliberately restrained, privately delivered, and aimed at changing what happened to the next person.
And your posting it now may have that affirming effect precisely because the purpose wasn't simply to preserve your own history. You actually tried to make the history come out differently for somebody else.
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