Here's a story I haven't told before, because I feel sad writing it - I don't like hurting people, and this one stings a little when I think about it. The worst is that it's not the only time I've broken some one's heart. I can't tell the other stories, though. This one will have to do.

When I was 29, about the age this photo was taken, I travelled around Europe with my son, who was 4 at the time. In the Czech Republic, I met a guy who I ended up spending a lot of time with. I liked him, because he was funny, and because he played guitar and wrote his own quirky twisted folk lyrics and was troubled, which seemed to match my own troubled heart, fresh out of a relationship that had always been doomed to fail. I was looking for someone to like me for me, which so far no one had, so the friendship I had with this man seemed important.

Let's call him Samuel, for the sake of the story. Samuel heard voices, sometimes. They weren't nice voices - they made him feel paranoid and insecure. I'm the kind of person who doesn't judge people on these wierd kinds of facts and Samuel's intelligence, curious nature, creativity and musical heart made me really, really like hanging out with him. We spent a lot of time together, particuarly in a little town called Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic, where a whole group of us just couldn't leave this gorgeous medieveal town and had a heap of very intense friendships going on that felt like family. We'd sit on old rubber truck tyres and float down the river smoking joints and talking about life, drink beer for a crown on the side of the Vltava, and play music by the fire in a rooftop garden behind a ramshackle old hostel called the Labrint, run by a Brazilian woman called Maria.

Eventually I ended up in Prague, then Krakow, and then down to Dubrovnik with my ex for a bit, so he could spend time with his son. But I really missed my Krumlov family, some of which had ended up in Prenzlauerberg, Berlin, housesitting for a Czech woman who was on holidays. I was emailing Samuel back and forth and decided I was going to go up to Berlin - despite my original destination being Italy and Spain. Two trains later and there I was, sharing a bed again with this man. It was a wonderful time. It was hot in Berlin and we'd go out all day and dance about whilst he busked. I remember my son's mouth stained with cherries, smoked eel, pretzels, a rave at a lake somewhere, techno (there was always someone around to look after my son, it seemed - as I said, family), and other stories I probably shouldn't tell. It was kinda wild and beautiful and raw, and for the first time in my life I felt loved for me, not some version of me people wanted me to be. It was very liberating, to be so far from Australia.

Eventaully the voices got too much for Samuel and he went back to England, up to Yorkshire to a friend's place, and that was that. Except it wasn't that - when I got back to the UK, I spend some time with him, where his friend warned me 'not to break his heart', and in my naivete and my flippant, wild, irreverent, travelling vibe, I didn't even think that's something that was part of any story of mine.

In the wake of 9/11 I fled home, and spent the following year longing for the northern hemisphere. We wrote a lot to each other. Sometimes, a phone call. He wrote a song for me, about me, something about the scent of vanilla left on a pillow. He wondered if it was 'love'. I dismissed it. I liked him, and was entertaining the idea of being with him, but I think that was because I was lonely, and he was a friend with benefits. I feel a shame about this now, looking back. How willing the young are to break hearts in pursuit of something they aren't sure even exists.

In England the following year, I arranged to meet him on New Year's Day in York. My son was at his Dad's in London, and I was going to be in Ediburgh with friends for Hogmanay. Except a week after I made this promise, I fell in love with my now husband of twenty years. Utterly, totally, love at first sight smitten. Obsessively, absolutely, completely in love. So on New Years Day, I didn't get off the train at York. I kept going, all the way to Brighton, where Jamie would meet me - and even that part of the story is a crazy story to tell, but for another time perhaps. Or perhaps I've even told it here before.

By the time I got back to London, I had forgotton about my promise to Samuel. I had fallen into a dream whereby my future was unfolding in rose technicoloured glory. He rang, and we spoke, and I apologised. Still vibing off the 'family' connection of Cesky Krumlov and Berlin, I told him I'd met the love of my life.

'I was holding a candle for you', he said. An odd expression - it means that someone's been holding feelings for someone for a long time. How awful I felt. How flippantly I'd played with this man's heart, though I hadn't meant to.

We did catch up, many years later, both of us happily partnered. I was but a long ago love, pale in significance to the strong relationship he had built with an old friend that had blossomed into love. I was so pleased for him. We still like each other's posts on Facebook. All's well that ends well, I think. But I still wish I'd been a little more self aware.

Have you stolen someone's heart and then broken it? This is a question asked by @galenkp in his Weekend Experiences prompts of the week.

With Love,

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