Our relationship had been on the rocks for some time. My eyes had begun to wander. I'd started going to movies starring other men. It felt wrong — as if I were an adulteress. So I broke up with Matt Damon like a responsible adult.

Rather than jump into a new celebrity crush, I decided to give myself time to grieve the 17-year relationship we'd shared. That was more than a year ago. Matt Damon and I decided to stay friends — or I'm sure we would have if he knew I existed.

The summer before high school, my parents took us kids on a vacation to the United Kingdom. In preparation for the trip, I watched the movie "Braveheart" on an endless cycle, trying to master the Scottish accent in hopes of fooling people into thinking I was a local. In preparation for the trip, my mom pored over books. But the bulk of her studying, highlighting and circling occurred not in the pages of travel books but rather in the well-worn pages of the "Outlander" series.

I knew quite a lot about the "Outlander" books. My mom had given me daily updates on the time-defying romance for years. Claire, the protagonist, was a healer. She was strong, feisty and independent and had a knack for getting herself in trouble. She left behind a life and a love in post-World War II England. Brought back in time two centuries, in the Scottish Highlands, Claire fell in love with a younger hunk of a man, whom my mom only ever referred to as "My Jamie."

I didn't retain many details of the story. Though I enjoyed getting recaps on the latest adventures of Claire and My Jamie, I had no interest in picking up the fantasy books about a bunch of men in kilts. Not that my mom would have let me if I'd wanted to. What I didn't understand at the time was that though the "Outlander" series was indeed supernatural, the books also embraced the alternative definition of the term fantasy. My mom, along with thousands of other women, was in literary love with the ginger-haired male lead character from the 18th century.

Traipsing around Scotland, we headed to castles, battlegrounds and towns that had been the supposed stomping grounds of (the fictional) My Jamie Fraser. I remember my mom rambling on like a giddy teenager, a huge smile plastered across her face as we followed a shiny brochure map around his castle.

Meanwhile, just like my mom, I, too, was pretending to be someone else. Although, my mom was having more success pretending to be Claire than I was in pretending to be a local. No one in Scotland took me for Scottish, despite my months of studying the accent. If anything, every time I opened my mouth, it was met with blatant confusion. A few folks glanced over in pity and nodded in my parents' direction, as if trying to give silent support to the poor foreigners with the special child. To be fair, I did sound more Indian than Scottish.

"Are you trying to insult me?" one angry local asked.

"No, lassie," I responded, making the accent thicker, "I'm just speakin' as I normally do."

"Stop," the Scot said. "Just, stop."

And I did. Next time I try to learn the Scottish accent, I probably won't study an Australian actor.

Leaving the U.K. was bittersweet. It had been a beautiful adventure, but it had also painfully reminded both my mom and me of who we were and who we were not. I was not Scottish. She was not married to My Jamie. Back home, curled up on my parents' bed, I asked my mom to tell me a little more about "Outlander" and let her indulge in the crush that would never be.

This year, the "Outlander" series came to Starz. I watched the pilot just to see what the fuss was about. OK, I thought. I understand the Jamie attraction. I watched a few more episodes, and I was hooked. More than hooked, I was in literary love.

Matt Damon who?

I called my mom to say that her Jamie was now my Jamie.

It's super-weird to crush on the same character your mom crushes on, right? Yeah, it's weird.

Like Katiedid Langrock on Facebook, at http://www.facebook.com/katiedidhumor. Check out her column at http://didionsbible.com. To find out more about Katiedid Langrock and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.