There’s an Italian proverb that says: ‘chi di speranza campa, disperato muore’, which more or less translates as ‘the person who lives by hope will die by despair’. Then there’s another version which says ‘the person who lives by hope will die taking a shit’. It’s not clear who said any of these things. And I’m not sure what the meaning of the latter is, but the former probably means that you can’t live all your life hoping for something to happen. Sometimes you need to act on it. Or, in the case of a heartbreak, you better let it go. That is what a psychologist giving a TED talk about heartbreak says. I know I shouldn’t watch that stuff. But a friend sent me the link and I couldn’t resist. When you’re heartbroken, that’s pretty much all you can think of. And actually, if for a moment you forget about TED’s unchallengeable format, evangelical approach and elitist nature, the guy says it like it is. He explains how people with a broken heart act and think, and I pretty much tick all the boxes. He says hope can be incredibly destructive when you’re heartbroken, because it keeps you going, when really what you should be doing is let go of the damn man. Stop thinking about how it could have worked. How amazing he was. Blah blah blah. Maybe I actually didn’t need a privileged white man to tell me that, I had already more or less figured it out myself. So what then?

I have taken a heart-shaped poop this morning, have you noticed? It’s quite incredible. Maybe that’s a sign. No, it’s not. No. It’s not.