I was 13 and a hot mess.

I was a big, chaotic bag of hormones trying to understand everything. And then my mom brought me to the Women’s Festival in Yosemite. She wasn’t a camper; she was all high femme in heels and low cut tops, and this was going to be a new experience for her. Her partner at the time, someone as ephemeral as the seasons, was excited to show her how to pitch a tent…

Enter us driving into the campsite to see women playing basketball…naked as the day they were born, boobs flopping free, bush to rival the grounds around us being tickled by the wind.

I thought she was going to faint as she met my pubescent eyes in the rearview.

But tents went up, and I was proud that I could erect mine on my own. My very own tent, by myself. A truck pulled up at the campsite next to ours, and a young woman jumped out. Friendly, talkative, she popped her tent up not far from mine.

And I was in love. Utterly, desperately, in love. From that moment, I wanted to be near Mickey. (I never learned her last name.)

I went “jogging” with her every morning. (She ran. My tubby little self started out okay and ended up limping to the med tent for ice for my knees, which were already rubbish). When she failed to really notice me (thank fuck, given that I was a child and she was probably mid-twenties) I cried myself to sleep in my tent. I told one of Mom’s friends all about it, how I was in love and she didn’t even know I existed.

God bless my mom’s friend, she was sympathetic and never once made me feel like a stupid kid.

That was my first heartbreak, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was inconsequential, a quick week a million years ago. But those stick with us, don’t they? The ones that made us really feel.

I think that’s why I really took to Emma in The Heart Remembers. That first heartbreak that she never got over…and then she has a second chance. Now, I wouldn’t want a second chance with Mickey, wherever in the world she ended up. And she has no idea that she’s stayed with me all my life. How weird, that someone can effect us so profoundly and never have any idea…

What was your first heartbreak? Would you want a second chance if you could get one?