Loving anything besides a dog or child is hard enough; loving a drug addict is torture.

When I started my freshman year of college, I dumped my abusive ex-boyfriend of three years and started shacking up with this bumbling buffoon. We'll call him C since his drug of choice was cocaine.

Things with C got serious quickly. About four nights after we officially started dating, his roommate called me in a panic. He had either overdosed or been roofied. When people ask, I spare myself the shame and say it was the second option - who needs to know I loved a drug addict? (I guess everyone needs to know now). Once this happened I laid down the law — no f*cking cocaine.

Needless to say, my rules didn't stick and he was back at the blow the next weekend. He never listened.

When you love someone who doesn't love you to their fullest potential it hurts. It screws with your mind. It's even worse if someone loves a drug more than you. My poor heart wasn't ready for what happened:

• I felt valueless: When someone puts something above you that shouldn't be there, your self-value falls. You feel like you aren't good enough.
• I lost sleep: This asshat made me lose so much sleep that I probably could have written a novel if I spent my time effectively. Instead of being productive or sleeping, l would cry, worry, shame myself, or call my friends and cry to them.
• I became depressed: As someone who is prone to depression, it's easy for me to fall into a cycle of anxiety and tears. When he would choose his drugs over me, I would blame myself and say I wasn't good enough and didn't deserve his attention anyway.
• I became obsessive: Not obsessive in a productive way either. I would obsess over C's health and wellbeing. If he had any red around his nose or his eyes were even remotely bloodshot, I'd lose it. I'd stalk his social media because when he was high he became a whore. You know how they say "women are better at getting information than the FBI"? Well, we are. Every girl can become a stalker given the necessary suspicions.
• I lost friends: Granted I took the "kids" in the "divorce," I lost a few friendships because they just didn't want to deal with my cokehead boyfriend and I fighting over everything.
• I got hurt: I let this guy value an eight-ball over me. There's no excuse for that. Letting him value that more than me despite my efforts really took a toll on me.