You know that guy you casually dated for a few months a few years ago? That guy you really, really, really liked but you didn’t know how he felt so things just never worked out for you two? And then after things ended, you were both really awkward around each other but you always wanted another chance with him? Imagine if he died, completely unexpectedly. This is what happened to me. A guy I casually dated for a couple of months named Zack died in a car accident two months ago, and getting over him has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I can’t help but think that I am obviously not the only girl who’s ever been in this situation. So how do you get over the death of someone you had a very complicated history with? Here’s my story:

Zack and I knew each other in high school and when we ran into each other a few years ago, we started talking, resulting in what should have been just a one-night stand. Instead, we eventually started hanging out again last winter. Zack had basically every quality that I was looking for in a guy: he was cute, funny, very friendly, dedicated to his work (as a martial arts instructor and fireman), and similar to me in a lot of ways. I fell for him hard, but for some reason, our casual dating never turned into anything serious. We tried the whole friends-we’ll-see-where-things-go thing, but it got awkward because I was really hurt. That feeling came out as anger and soon we stopped speaking. Zack was truly a great guy and while I know he would have been nice to me if we spoke, things were just awkward. I ignored the happy birthday I got from him on my b-day, and the very last time I saw him, I went out of my way to avoid him. Read More »

You’ve been killing yourself all semester to tackle mountains of coursework while finding time to hit the gym and develop the perfect bikini bod to show off in Cancun, the Dominican Republic, Miami Beach…or wherever Spring Break 2009 finds you. When the day finally arrives, you’re ready to leave all of your woes behind. In a tropical hotspot hundreds of miles away from your RA, your professors, and your “Good Girl” reputation, you’re ready to let loose.

But be careful, ladies, because there’s still plenty of ways that your spring break behavior can come back to haunt you. Read More »

As college students, we pretty much think of ourselves as invincible, I know I certainly have. Until recently that is. I’ve been in car accidents, including one where my car hydroplaned off a cliff. I’ve drank myself to the point where I should have gone to the hospital. I’ve had my life threatened. But those things never quite hit me to the point where I realized I could have died.

On January 2nd, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning with a searing pain in my left lung and back. It felt like two cinderblocks were pushing on either side of me and every breath felt like a knife going through my lung. I have a low pain tolerance, but this was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I managed to walk to my parents’ room to wake them up as I was gasping for air. My mom helped me back into my room while my dad furiously researched the new medication my dermatologist put me on, convinced it was a side effect. I eventually fell back asleep, but when I woke up again I was greeted by pain that was even worse than before. My mom came in to check on me, and I told her I needed to go to the hospital.

In the emergency room, one of the doctors listened to my symptoms and said “I think you may have a blood clot in your lung.” What? A blood clot? In an 18-year old? I was so confused and scared; I immediately started bawling. They quickly took blood out of my left arm while putting an IV in the other, and I woke up in the middle of a CT-scan. They did ultrasounds on my legs to make sure there were no clots because that’s where most clots originate. About an hour later, another doctor came in and told me they did find a clot in my lung.

I was terrified. Read More »

Last night’s long-anticipated return of Gossip Girl featured a new year, new relationships, new secrets, and an unusually large amount of comic relief.

Jenny’s resolution, apparently, was to finish high school…but she’s dropped the “Little J” business and makes it her goal to save Nelly from Blair’s Queen Bee squad. She recruits Eric and Nelly to take over the “cool” table, and, since Blair’s having a Bass-induced breakdown, J manages to win the upper hand. Ironically, when Nelly realizes that Jenny has no hope of stealing Blair’s crown, she runs back to the popular kids. Ha, ha, ha. What satire!

Meanwhile, the writers took advantage of GG’s break to make a clean break from Serena’s art-beau, Aaron, who doesn’t even get a sappy break-up scene. (Thank God.) Instead, it seems that S. just flat out left him in Buenos Aires when she realized that Lily and Rufus weren’t shacking up and that she could bang Dan without feeling incestuous. Rufus, of course, is less than happy to find Serena and Dan blissfully happy. Remember last month’s cliffhanger? “Was it a boy or a girl?” We find out that it was a boy, and that Lily put him up for adoption and relinquished her rights to ever search for him, much to Rufus’s dismay.

Chuck, still wallowing in the aftermath of his father’s untimely death, has become a zombie that not even Blair can seem to crack. So, he brings a joint to school and breaks the news to Dan that he has an illegitimate half-brother out there somewhere. Blair remains faithful to her shell of a man-crush, and even tries to act as his guardian when he’s summoned to the office for smoking hash in the hallways (how cute), but then the mysterious new character, Uncle Jack, interrupts and takes responsibility. What does Jack have up his sleeve? Read More »

Okay, every other time I’ve written about screaming at the TV during Gossip Girl is officially taken back. Because tonight was the night for throwing sh*t in the living room during obsessive fits of GG excitement.Warning to fans who missed the episode (and if you did, I hope you had a good excuse – like finding Chace Crawford naked in your dorm after class or something): there will be spoilers in about two seconds. Major. Spoilers.

Before I get to the real juice, can I just ask if anyone else noticed the “dress” Serena wore to Eleanor and Cyrus’ wedding? Girlfriend needed some pants. Or at least the rest of her skirt.

Yes, tonight was a night of new beginnings in the wake of the death of Bart Bass. The funeral prompted Cyrus to ask Eleanor to get hitched ASAP. It prompted Lily and Rufus to plan to admit their love, and for Serena to encourage Lily to run off with Rufus. And it prompted Serena to run off to Buenos Aires with Aaron. And Aaron to tell S. that he’s falling in love with her, which might have been more romantic if it didn’t immediately follow his suggestion that their first time together be in the airplane bathroom. Read More »

I used to joke that I could measure the amount of fun I had at a party by how many bruises I woke up with the next day. I’m not trying to sound sadistic, but I bruise easily and am incredibly clumsy; I party hard, and I fall even harder. I haven’t even been too out of control in the past few weeks, yet my legs are still littered with black and blue marks that seem to have appeared out of nowhere.

I’ve seen a lot of drunken injuries in my day. Some are funny; some not so much. You really shouldn’t need to wear hard hats or protective armor to a party, so here’s a brief list of some potentially painful injuries, and how to avoid them.

Injury: Cigarette burns.

Avoid them by: Not drunkenly smoking your cigs all the way through the band; not giving someone with a lit cigarette your hand; not putting the wrong side of your lit cigarette into your mouth.

Injury: First, second, or third degree burns.

Avoid them by: Being conscious of where the bonfire pit is at a keg party on a cool autumn night; not attempting to walk through said pit in an effort to reunite with your friends after peeing in the woods.

Injury: Stitches on your scalp.

Avoid them by: Not jumping up and down on your lofted bed and cracking your head open on the ceiling; not falling out of a lofted bed after sloppy, drunken, sex, and cracking your head open on your f*ck buddy’s desk.

Injury: A shiner the color of an eggplant.

Avoid it by: Not chugging straight Bacardi and proceeding to faceplant your nightstand. These actions may or may not also have a negative effect on the nightstand, which may or may not break apart from the impact of your face. Read More »

Life…for every one of us, it’s a puzzle made up of different pieces, different moments. As that famed song in Rent says, there are “five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes” in every year that we live, so basically, that’s a whole lotta moments. For the most part it’s small, mundane moments; brushing our teeth, taking out the trash, traveling to and from work, school and other obligatory destinations. But, there are those few moments in our lives, both good and bad, that are truly life-defining and create us into the unique individuals we are.

A few of the good; getting accepted into and graduating from college, meeting our future spouse/partner, our wedding day and the birth of our children. And then the bad; our first heartbreak, parents’ divorces, our first experience of rejection from a college or job. There is, however, one inevitable part of life that we all must deal with at some point, and which I’ll venture out to say is the suckiest part of life; death. There is nothing quite like losing someone you love. It hits you at your very core, turns your world upside down, and makes life suddenly seem so REAL. For me, this jarring, life-changing moment happened just over a year ago when my dear grandmother lost her battle with ovarian cancer. Read More »

Early one morning a year ago in Vlissingen, Netherlands, a 21- year old named Ruth de Visser died in her sleep finally succumbing to the ravaging forces of Hodgkins disease. She was my best friend.

Less than 48 hours later, I found myself back in the States, walking across the stage at GWU to receive my BA.

It’s impossible to describe my emotions at that moment. I was simultaneously overjoyed to graduate and heartbroken to the point of physical pain from the loss of my friend. I don’t remember the entire weekend actually — only that it was punctuated with meltdowns and many out-of-body experiences.

I felt so alone. Part of this was due to the innate solitary nature of the grieving process — and nothing I write here can really change that feeling. The other part, however, was figuring out how to explain to my loved ones what I needed from them. Initially, I was too exhausted to do this — I pushed everyone away, including my poor boyfriend, and walked around like a lost zombie. At the time I wished that there was a way for everyone to just “get” what I was feeling. Read More »

It’s as vivid today as it was when it happened five years ago: Chris and I bodysurfing on an abandoned beach just outside of Acapulco and Stephanie looking at us with wonder from the shore. He and I would get slammed, and slammed again, then come up smiling from sand-filled ear to water-logged ear. Just before going in, we looked out into the vast horizon. The sky was clear blue. There were no clouds in sight. The ocean held us in its wake. Suddenly, we both gasped at the same time: a flying stingray briefly jumped out of the water just fifteen feet away.

“Did you see that?” he asked me.

“That was so cool,” I said.

Christopher Cady was my best friend’s boyfriend. He and Stephanie — like myself — had a real case of wanderlust. With no one else could I share my travel stories and feel completely understood. Only they understood why I would want to attend college in Maine, a continent and ocean away from my home in Hawaii: for the pure challenge and unpredictability.

Steph and I lived vicariously through each other, traversing the globe and telling each other tale after wondrous tale. Their travels brought them from Maine to Mexico to Taos to Central America to Boston, but culminated abruptly in Chamonix one fateful afternoon in January 2004. Chris had prepared an engagement ring before their trip. He didn’t get a chance to give it to her because, despite the storm that was brewing that late afternoon, he took an off-piste route and went missing. Read More »

I’m risking my life to get this out to you. Seriously. According to a recent New York Times article, blogging can cause death. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s the evidence:

Two weeks ago, 60-year-old technology blogger, Richard Shaw, died of a heart attack. Only a few months earlier, in December, another tech blogger, 50-year-old Marc Orchant, died of a massive coronary. Also in December, the well-known blogger, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack.

I told ya. Of course, there is no official diagnosis that blogging caused these incidents, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised. Blogging can be majorly stressful. According to the article, “bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.” Read More »