Joanna, I Must Let You Go

Joanna.
It's been eleven long years.
Eleven LONG years.

I lost your photo two years ago. Otherwise, I guess it would still be there in my wallet today.
I think I did look at it most days.

I never stopped loving you. But that love has determined every action I have taken. It made me everything I am, for good, or for ill.
No one else was ever you.

I still don't know where you came from. You were there in the morning, you were holding me, and I don't know how you got there.
You changed my life. There was nothing complex about it, I loved you so much it hurt, and you felt the same.
It was the other things that ruined it.
I was young and full of male pride.

I don't think before then, I'd ever felt love in that way. You made me believe that I could be loved, and I loved you with every fibre of my being.

I cared too much about how other people judged you. I cared too much about my own dignity. I allowed concerns about your sexual behaviour to bother me.
I was stupid.
You were virtuous and pure in a far higher sense of those terms.
You were, and no doubt still are, a paradigm of womanhood.

And I never stopped to think how lucky I was to have your love.

Because no love that has ever been offered me since, was worth a penny by comparison.

I have lived in the shadow of your pedestal ever since.

For years afterwards, I wanted vengeance. Not on you, because I loved you, but I wanted people to feel the heartbreak I'd felt, the pain I still carried with me. I think a part of me, for a long time, sought to break hearts, just to let people know how it felt.
I could never shake you out of my head.

And then, years later, we got back in contact.
It gave me closure, yes, but it didn't end your role in my life.
Because I knew, that in some bizarre way, you'd always love me. You had given me that. For years I had felt that pain, thought that it had just been me that had suffered. To know that you had carried it with you too, gave me strength.

It made me not need love. Because I knew you would remember me till your dieing day. That was enough. And to have your love, even as a memory, even as a past failure, was prize enough. A far greater prize than finding love in the present.
The knowledge that once, I had you, has been enough to carry me through.
No woman has ever met your standards.

I can still taste the tears I kissed from your eyelids.
I can still feel the curve of your shoulderblade.
And I'll never forget that you had no idea who Michael Portillo was. That's partly why I loved you.

You were defenceless, vulnerable, innocent.

I have spent my life looking for your twin.

I will always carry what we had within me, it was Pure Love, Love as it should be.
For so long, I shut myself down and only allowed myself an occasional internal glimpse at your pedestal.

I think I'm finally ready to let you go.



Finally ready to realise, that for a woman to be as good as you, doesn't mean she has to BE you.
And to accept that not only have I never had the love of a woman like you since, I wouldn't deserve it anyway.
The women who have given me their love since, were not worthy of being considered your successors. I should not disrespect your memory in the way I have.

But most importantly, I really should ONLY give my love to women of your standard. Even if they don't give it back.

In my heart, I've never betrayed you.
But finally, I think, I must let you go.

Goodbye, Joanna.
I loved you.

And I STILL don't forget, this was our song.