We all lose ourselves. We get to a point where we don't understand anything and get lost in the world. Sometimes it gets the best of us and we fall off the deep end. Sometimes it's severe. For me, I crashed fast and hard. I became a person I couldn't recognize.

I’ve been hurt. I’ve been dragged through the mud by someone I thought loved me. I’ve been programmed into thinking the only thing I should really be proud about is my body and how that gets guys. I’d spend nights getting drunk to the point I wasn’t even myself. I wasn’t okay. I made everyone think I was. I threw on my “millionaire smile” as one cunningly charming man had put it. I fell for the guys that just wanted to get my body undressed and not my soul. I never was the one to go out and be influenced by sex, drugs or alcohol. For a time, that became all I knew.

If I wasn’t drunk, high or with some one, I was bored, lonely, miserable and felt like I was worthless. Now I realize how ludicrous it was to have gauged my life fulfillment on self destruction. I was killing myself to feel good.

The doctors asked me, “Were you trying to kill yourself.”

At the time, I was adamant that I wasn’t. I swore up and down I was okay and I’m usually not bad and that I wasn’t getting as inebriated as I actually was.

What they didn’t get from me was I had passed out drunk just a week earlier.

What did I have at the time? A family that didn't appreciate me and that I fought with constantly. A relationship that failed due to my inability to stay faithful while once again being intoxicated to the point of hospitalization. Or wait, here’s a good one. The guy. The guy who encouraged me to lead my life the way I was going. Who encouraged me to sleep around, to drink unbelievable amounts of alcohol and to look at commitment and relationships as a curse and things that should be avoided at all costs. The guy who in the end, made me numb to everything through his words and the alcohol he had me chug.

I defended him to everyone. Would tell them all it wasn’t his fault and that I made my own choices. Then I woke up in a hospital with no clothes, sand caked in my eye sockets, scrapes on my face and no recollection of the night before.

Yes, I made the decision to drink. Yes, I didn’t stop when I felt like I was already bad. I felt wasted and I kept drinking. This is where they think I tried to kill myself. I couldn’t feel a thing, the alcohol had entirely numbed me and I continued to drink. He is not to blame for this. However, I still have a right to be mad at him.

He turned the situation into a him problem. Oh, I got a ticket. The police questioned me. My dad took away my car keys.

No “how are you” or offer to bring me my stuff I had left in his car. Nothing. Even better? A day after, he stopped talking to me entirely. Nights of 6 hour phone calls and 30 day snapchat streaks: gone. Just like that.

That hurt. I kept trying to convince myself I deserved it, that I completely caused that. But silly me, I thought we were friends. Guess when the guy gets his way with you and sees you can’t handle your liquor, he’s out.

Now I watch him pull the same pattern and routine with the other girls and I laugh and pray that they don’t go down the same road I do because, boy, was that a dark road.

I had a big heart. One of the biggest. I’d give until I had nothing left. No one could ever find me without my growing smile and big blue eyes full of love and optimism.

I lost that for a while. I became bitter and cut off from people emotionally. Now? I'm finding who I used to be and getting things back on track. I've made amends with my failures and am working toward a better me. We all fall off the deep end sometimes, it just depends on whether you let yourself stay down or if you fight like hell to get back up.