“I was fifteen years old when the girls in my grade laughed at me for not having my first kiss. So I let a boy who hardly knew me stick his tongue down my throat after math class.

At sixteen I learned how it felt to stare in the mirror and hate everything you see, but he told me I was beautiful so I let him undress me.

At seventeen I learned the beauty of alcohol, and how great it is when you drink so much that you feel numb to his touch.

I was eighteen when the boy with the most chiseled jaw bone and piercing blue eyes stared straight through me. He blew smoke into my mouth and I inhaled like he was my oxygen. Six months later he left and took my only source of life with him.

At nineteen I made my way from boy to boy trying to understand the concept of love. Not one of them loved me, but it was the closest I’ve ever been to feeling whole.

At twenty years old I kiss boys who only miss me when they’re four drinks in. They compare me to whiskey and tequila and grasp me like their favorite beer.

It took me twenty years to realize that lust is not love, and people are not medicine”