by Natalie Murray ‘18

Sophomore May Blueberg never imagined that a disease she has had since age nine would nearly end her life. Her illness is quite common and usually not life-threatening, but when she experienced cardiac arrest on March 21, the cause was her disease: Bieber Fever.

Blueberg has had “Bieber Fever,” a condition that affects millions of teenage girls, since 2009, when Justin Bieber’s first single, “One Time,” was released.

“It was 2:19 p.m. on July 30 when I turned on the car radio. As soon as I heard his voice…” said Blueberg, as she paused to stare dreamily into space. “His voice was so beautiful that I basically died right there. It was love at first listen.”

Since that day, Blueberg has been wholeheartedly obsessed with Bieber. Her collection of Bieber merchandise includes all of his albums, both of his movies (which she watches at least eight times a month), 331 posters hung on her bedroom walls, 27 shirts, framed concert tickets from each of his tours, and various other objects, such as cupholders, stickers, and jewelry.

In addition to her wide variety of merch, Blueberg proves her superfan status in her frequent social media posts regarding Bieber. Her Snapchat stories often feature her myriad of photos of him with filters, Bieber lyrics compose nearly all of her Instagram captions, and a vast majority of her tweets have to do with the singer.

In fact on Sunday, March 20, Blueberg tweeted a Photoshopped picture of her and Bieber as bride and groom, saying “@justinbieber this could be us one day!! Love you!!!!” As she checked her phone in the middle of health class the next day, she saw that Bieber had responded to her edit, saying “@MAYisJustinsBAE oh haha that’s kinda creepy.” Upon the realization that her favorite person in the world acknowledged her existence in a whole 44 characters, Blueberg’s heart stopped.

Luckily, the class was finishing their its unit, and Blueberg was successfully resuscitated. The entire class got bonus points on the next test for handling the situation so well.

After the incident, Blueberg became even more obsessed with Bieber, hanging a massive poster of his tweet on the ceiling above her bed.

“I like to see it before I go to sleep. It makes me so happy that he knows I exist,” said Blueberg. “Like, before, there was zero possibility of us actually getting married. Now? It’s totally possible!”