Yesterday, I saw the sweetest couple - they were middle aged, neither very attractive, and they were wearing matching anoraks. They had an air of up-tightness about them, like I was beneath them because I didn’t belong to the train spotting club and didn’t have my very own beige coat and faded jeans. Poor me, with my sinful designer clothes and opulent social life.

Then I realised that could be me in twenty years time. Bitter at life and taking it out on my wardrobe, and trying to feel better by giving dirty looks to more fortunate people, who didn’t spend their lives taking care of their boring husband who probably kept toy train sets in the bedroom, and who’s idea of kinky is the novelty postcards you can buy in tourist shops at the seaside.

And I don’t want tohave never left the town I was born in. I don’t want to heat up microwave food and drink economy wine, waiting until I finally get hit by a bus. I don’t want to spend my winters wearing a parka.

I want you. I want to show you the world, to talk about art and music and classic literature - I don’t want to eat fish and chips and watch Countdown.

I miss me. When you were gone, I spent every minute wishing you were back, but I found myself. I became somebody new, somebody who was strong enough to cope on their own. And now you're back, and I can’t depend on myself anymore. I want to be with you, but I don’t want to be trapped in suburbia. Maybe you only came back to remind me I can live without you, I can survive alone.

I want to love you, but I know that if I do, I’ll end up shouting at you to pick up your shirts and getting fatter and fatter until you find an eighteen year old bottle-blonde, and I’m stuck in a fast food restaurant because I never got any qualifications.

So, for now, at least. This is goodbye to everything I knew - and it’s the scariest and hardest thing I’ve ever hard to do. And I don’t want to, I don’t want to wake up one day and realise I’ve seen the world but all I really want to see is you, but I don’t think I will. I have to take a risk.

Goodbye, my soulmate. I hope you find someone who’s pretty and sweet and does all those things I could never do. You deserve to be the happiest man on Earth. But I’ve been through hell, and I deserve to be happy too. I hope you understand why this has to be goodbye.

Try to pick up those shirts?

All my love, forever.