Dear ex, why did you encourage my drinking? Why did you let me drink and drive? Why did you spend all my money? Why did you love to take those pills with me, and always take more than me like it was a challenge? Why couldn't we be together without being outside of ourselves? Why was my paycheck used only to kill sobriety? Why didn't I matter to you? How could you kiss me and beg me to have sex with you, while you dated someone you cheated on me with? Why did you always swear you loved me, even when we both knew you didnt? And lastly, why was that bruise on the inside of my thigh when I woke up after passing out? It looked like your hand. Why were you always worried I might be pregnant when we never had sex? Was it because you took advantage of my unconsciousness?

Dear old best friend, why did you let me leave your house that night at 1am, drunk out of my mind? Why did you wake me up just so I could try to drive home? Why did you kiss me, when I called my ex to tell him I loved him one last time? Why didn't you take my keys so I couldn't leave? Why did you buy me liquor? Those laws are set for a reason, not for you to buy me liquor at 17.

Dear liquor store attendant, why did you sell me liquor when I was 17? There's no way I looked old enough. I was probably half drank already. Don't you have some sort of policy? Do you know I could've died? I tried to kill myself, the products you sold me gave me the courage to try. I never quite got up the nerve to go through with it.

Dear gas station/drive through clerk, some of you reported me. Some of you just laughed me off. You had to smell the booze on my breath, the weed on my clothes. I bought half of your candy aisle for Christ's sake!! do you know how many times I almost wrecked?

Dear Dad, thank you for only being moderately mad at me when I wrecked my truck and you had to pull it out of a ditch at 1am because I passed out behind the wheel. But I needed you to be angry. That's why I kept drinking. I needed someone to tell me no.

Dear boyfriend, thank you for telling me that you'd leave me if I didn't quit drinking. Thank you for listening to me puke over the phone for 2 hours straight, crying "I don't wanna do this no more." Thank you for taking me out the next day. Thank you for being stronger than me, and loving me enough to stick with me through the hardest thing I've ever done. Thank you for giving me hope, for bringing it home that I was making myself vulnerable. Thank you for still loving me, and for being the amazing, wonderful person you are!

I am 5 months sober now.