who will give me surgery hugs?

As the fated date approaches, July 13th's countdown ticks loudly and instigates my anxiety for tomorrow's 9 pm (CT) closing ceremonies. Aged almost in parallel, I have grown into a woman alongside LC, Lo, KCav, and Ceiling-eyes Partridge. We've made hard choices together and I've stood by them through horrible hangovers, post-meth-addiction dating struggles, and countless surgeries alike. Tomorrow, when The Hills comes to an end, so will a part of my youth.

As the girls gossip about the past and chat unknowingly about the future, I will sit in a bittersweet cloud of present tense; happy that these potentially-strong females can finally live life freely off-screen, and sad that I can no longer laugh and judge to make myself feel better in some twisted sense. Sure, I wasn't birthed onto the Pacific shoreline with a silver spoon in my mouth, but I'd like to think my general positivity and drive to succeed (whatever that means) makes me pretty okay. Watching these hoes unravel adult reality and cry about it has been pretty hilarious, if not encouraging, that the rest of us less-fortunate assholes actually have had something going for us all along: a life not cloaked in veneers, perhaps. When you learn early that nothing is perfect, what you want you may not get, and that insecurities are healed from within, there is something vindicating about witnessing these lightbulbs go off for someone else. Especially as her surgery-jaw prevents her from chewing a sandwich and the permanance sets in, rolling down her face.

I told you...it's twisted. But it is for all of us. Isn't that why we watch? To see that even the glamorous "celebrities" have faults and make mistakes? To see that even the most bodacious maneater around doesn't always get her man? To see that the smart ones knew when to walk away and capitalize on a book tour or clothing line because they didn't want the light at the end of the tunnel to be another humiliating camera flash?

As our Hollywood friends descend from popular culture tomorrow night, I will toast Andre to them all from my small two-bedroom apartment surrounded by my own version of girlfriends. The kind that don't start sex-tape rumors about me, but instead destroy the evidence, and the kind that would never, ever, under any circumstances, let me marry the crystal-weilding mental-case Spencer Pratt. One thing is for sure, however; from the Hollywood Hills, to Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, women everywhere will gather in gaggles, making puppy-dog faces and swapping surgery hugs with the ones they love as the clock strikes game-over for our frenemies out West. Godspeed, and thanks for the memories.