On the night I died, I had decided to meet a friend for drinks. My girlfriend, Cheryl, was in her dorm room, working on a paper that was due the next day. I had wanted to break things off, had been thinking about it for a while, but how do you say “I don’t want to be your boyfriend anymore” over the phone? You can’t. So, I wanted to wait and tell her in person. It was the only gentlemanly thing I could do. Before I met my friends for drinks, I decided to trek over to her building in West Hall and speak to her. It wasn’t pleasant, for either of us, but it was necessary, I thought. Once our conversation had ended, I desperately needed drinks, so I made my way to the restaurant. Jimmy’s Pizza Bar wasn’t far from campus--I only had to walk a few blocks, and I could easily catch a cab back to my apartment, even at that late hour.
I remember, as I walked, there was a ceaseless buzz in my pocket. Within a few minutes, I had 27 messages--missed calls, text messages, Facebook assaults, Twitter hashtags. Ah, life in the time of social media.