Never Google Heartbreak

A few years ago, a colleague of mine was dumped weeks before her wedding. We worked in a primary school and she took to rocking in the classroom’s dressing up corner with the brides’ veil on her head. I’d split with my man only a few weeks before. He said I was ‘too much’ for him, so for a while, every day after work, we’d find the darkest corner of the nearest pub and stare into our vodka, analysing text messages and asking ourselves, why us?

We quickly established that she’d been blinded by dazzling good looks when in fact her fiancé was thick as a plank and I’d been just too good for my ex. I probably needed someone much more special. Boosted by these booze soaked chats we’d live to fight another day. I’d go to my terrible bed sit and compile lists entitled ‘Why he is dead to me’ and she’d get off with the animated cadaver who was ‘Head of Key Stage Two.’

When my ex moved his new girlfriend in, I got an inkling things were not looking good for a reunion and so decided to get myself fixed up with the biggest brashest, most swaggery man I could find. But how? My old methods of attracting male attention; out run them, punch them, steal their football, perform magic tricks, challenge them to a whiskey drink off, proved fruitless.

In this maze of despair I turned to endless online searches and found there are good things to google; holiday destinations, spa packages, Top Shop dresses, funny cats, college courses… but there are also bad things. There are things you should never google; your ex, your exes new girlfriend, how to do revenge on the cheap, am I good looking? Baby outfits for dogs, what is this itchy rash? And… heart break*.

Years later when I was writing Never Google Heartbreak, I looked back on crazy bed sit days and thought it would be great if I’d known then what I know now. That a peroxide pixie crop takes a good while to grow out, that swaggery men are not necessary that cool and most of all, that it would all turn out okay in the end.
*If you google heart break you will find; A bitter woman named Dawn, love poems, damaged aortas.