I met Druggie Sean on a tiny island in Indonesia. The moment I saw him in the hostel — mullet, tattoos and still dancing around the table even whilst holding himself up on a crutch, I knew he was on my radar.

Looking back, Sean was the person I had the least in common with and felt the least myself with. It should have made him forgettable, but instead he became the one I still think about.

Druggie Sean reminded me most of my ex — for all the most grey-area reasons.

He wasn’t mean, but he was blase. He was clearly unhealed, but spoke “I don’t need therapy” with a badge of honour. He didn’t know how to use his words very well and did his best to show instead.

Where Canggu Dave was gazing into my eyes and asking me to tell him another story about my life… Druggie Sean was gazing at my face waiting to tell me about that time he did magic mushrooms and went snorkelling.

He earned the name because any time you walked by his private room, he’d have his door wide open, speaker blaring, and some sort of substance lined up on the hostel chest of drawers. Kind of like when I’d look up from the waiters station and gaze over to my not-yet boyfriend behind the bar, saucer-eyes nodding at the crazy music he put on for the close.

And just like I still feel uneasy at reducing my ex down to all the things that were wrong with our relationship, I feel uneasy reducing Sean down to a lack of emotional depth and his use of class A drugs. Because he was, deep down, a sweetheart.

I made my move on Sean at a foam party at a hostel across the island. A cheesy pick-up line about him making sure he didn’t drown otherwise I’d have to give him CPR.

One drink later we were snogging in a maze of white foam bubbles.

The man partied like the crutches were scared of him. We disappeared into the hostel bathrooms together. When we left, the sun had set and everyone had left.

On New Years Eve I took the magic mushrooms and boldly stated “am I coming back to your room tonight” whilst slurping noodles outside a MiniMart at 4am. Back to the room he did take me, only to kick me out two hours later so he could go take coke with his local friends.

I wasn’t mad at Druggie Sean — I had, truly, been trying to use him for his private room (Chloe had been pissing me off all night and I didn’t want to room with her).

A few days later, I’d booked my own private room in an act of never needing a man. I walked myself home from the club with a pizza alone to watch Wicked 2 in bed, only to receive a message from him inviting me out to the island afterparty. Soon I was using his crutch as a limbo pole with his friends from the island and my new friends from the hostel. That night I took him back to my room (girl power).

But we didn’t sleep together. Not at first.

I could feel this mans pain. He’d shared some personal things with the group (in his very blase way) and I could sense a sadness.

“All right, talk to me”

Soon he was sobbing into my chest. We opened up about our past. I fell comfortably into the role of rescuer. Life coach. In-house-therapist-girlfriend. And what had originally began as a night where he stated he was too tired for sex, turned into us passionately kissing and.. you know the rest. I also knew the emotional-boner scene all too well from — you guessed it, my ex.

Days passed and we fell into a routine. He slept, resurrected at 2pm ready for a Smirnoff Ice and a wobbly game of volleyball in the pool. He’d tell me to kick him out of my room if I wanted to get with another guy because he didn’t want to cramp my style. I’d tell him sleeping with the same person was more fun than a new guy every night. We’d end up back in my private room so many times that the hostel would give him his own key. At some point the chaos tattoo was born from a spontaneous decision in a club smoking area. Then we soon broke the M Box curse and escaped to a private villa he booked for us.

This is where things got cute and I didn’t know how to read it. In one breath he listened to music so loudly and didn’t really consider me, but in another he pushed until I said yes to spending the day at the ice bath together and out to dinner for my last night. He woke up early to cycle beside me as I dragged my suitcase down the cobbled streets to the port (broken ankle — I’ll let him off). He sat me on his knee and kissed me goodbye.

As with most travel romances, the hair strokes and nights in bed transition into sporadic Instagram story likes and a “hope you’re loving Peru!” message here and there, but still my time with Sean has left a mark on me. He’s still someone I think about often and smile at when I see he’s back on the island again.

But with Sean I didn’t feel exactly heard, or like i could be my silliest self with him.

But I saw the gratitude in his eyes the night after he cried to me. I felt his inability to say it in words but in the way he stroked my hair. In the way he laughed when I laughed at the Youtube videos he showed me. He refused to tell my friend how he felt for me but she said she could see it in his eyes. And I saw what lay under the surface when he stuck a picture of me on his hand made oracle card when I ran the workshop for everyone at the hostel.

He cared for me in the ways he knew how. But they very rarely translated into the ways I needed.

And I think that’s where a lot of us get lost in long-term relationships, isn’t it? We confuse feeling needed with feeling known. We confuse helping someone along their journey with being held in our journey to our truest self.

Sean showed to me the importance of knowing who brings out what sides of you and why we can end up staying longer than we’re meant to. What parts of a person pull on a pattern already inside of you, and what can happen if you choose to fall back into it instead of step away.

I think if i had met Sean in any other situation, I would have found myself in an “I can change him” cycle. Instead we were sent our opposite ways — him to South America and me to Vietnam.