In lieu of recent events: a "friend" of mine was shot and killed in a drug-related situation. I say "friend" in quotation marks because I am not sure if I should say we are still friends just because they are dead or because I believe deep-down we were friends, or because at one point in my life I did consider this person a friend. I am struggling on how to feel in this circumstance. Then I feel guilty because I feel indecisive, like maybe I should be tore up about this. In reality, I am just biding my time for the next casualty of drug addiction in my life. Here is my letter to all my "friends" who have turned into addicts. (Disclaimer: this could get very real).

Dear "friend,"

How should I start this letter? What do you want to hear? Why should I write the things you want to hear? Why should I shield your feelings when it seems that you care for no one else's? I don't care, at this point, if that's not what you mean or how you feel. What I care about are my children, my family and their safety. You are not conducive to that lifestyle. You are not the type of person I want around my kids or myself.

We started on the same path, it seems that you had it easier than I did at times, when we were kids. Why did you choose a different path? You had the same opportunities as I did. We grew up in the same neighborhood, we had the same family dynamic, my mom loved me as much as your mom loved you, we had the same financial stability (we were both poor kids), and you still took a different direction in your life. And I am here to feel like crap about it.

I feel like crap because I am waiting for you to die. I am counting down the days for your death. I keep telling myself I won't feel anything and I keep making myself feel angrier and angrier at you because of your lifestyle. I just don't get it. I never will, and I don't think I want to. Actually, I don't want to. What I want is to not feel bad because I don't want to know. What I want is for you to get clean and live a life I know you can live. What I want is for you not to die.

Your addiction makes me hate you. It makes me feel regret that I even started a friendship with you at any point in our lives. It makes me think the worst of you. It brings to light all the bad things we went through in our friendship and totally buries the good times. Your addiction makes me think you are capable of all bad things and are willing to do said bad things to me and mine. And why wouldn't you? This is your life. Stealing, fraud, lies...

Now, at least once a day you cross my mind and I get mad. I hate you. Then I feel bad and beat myself for feeling that way. I think of how I might have been able to help you. Then I hate you again. This is a very stressful friendship, I must say. Now, things are happening, people are dying, overdosing, getting arrested, or beat up. Do you care? Do you care enough to stop?

Writing this letter I'm back to hating you again. As I lose my train of the thought, it makes me so made that I have so much to say to you and I never have the opportunity to. My wife tells me "it's not worth it," "it wouldn't make a difference" and "you would just end up more hurt by what you said than he or they would if you told them."

Maybe she's right. Maybe.

But here it is, for all of cyber-space to see. To relate to. To judge me. I don't like you anymore. Drugs have made you into a horrible person and I don't like that. I don't want my kids to grow up in a world where people like you will steal from them, or offer them drugs or whatever. I have no ending to this letter, and so much more to say. I will close with this: at this point, it's not "if" you're going to die, it's "when" you're going to die, and I'll be damned if I sit by hoping that you chose a different path.

Yours,

Lindsey