let’s talk about alcohol! Alcohol has played a part in my life since I was 13! When I was 13 we were just being “cool” throwing that old blue Malibu in our lemon line Gatorade 🤣! Off and on for years my friends and I would dabble with whatever we could find! It was all for giggles and laughs anyways right, what harm could it do!
by 16 we were drinking on weekends, sitting uptown at the grocery store on the picnic tables or going cruising around! Having camp outs just so we could drink and no one would know!
then fast forward to 17 <2004>! 17 was an incredibly hard year for me! Every hope I had was crushed! At 17, I applied to Lincoln Christian College so I could get my degree in youth ministry! All I ever wanted was to be just like my old youth pastor JH! He and his wife were my saving grace for so many years! They walked me through every hard step once I was open and honest and let them on. When I found out I didn’t get accepted because my GPA was too low, and I missed the ACT test score by 2 points I was crushed. That’s when my spirialing really started.
Then next up my best friend, my whole world packed up and moved with her family to Oklahoma. That’s when my faith skipped out fully. I was lost. I spent the last 2 years building up everything and at this point in my life I felt I had nothing left to give.
I’ve never handled losing people very well! I’ve never handled not being top notch well. If I had a dream and a curve ball came at that time in life I just gave up!
so I tried reinventing myself…. I found a new group of friends and started trying to “fit in” 2005 was definitely a year of chaos!
IN my community, at the point of 17 I held a higher standard. I was that kid who helped, who loved, who cares, who was helping the youth at church, then things changed. My new group of friends introduced me to Mary Jane! So now I was drinking, smoking cigarettes, and smoking weed! Hosting keggers with my friends, and just living up the world. Who needed the old me, she wasn’t fun. She was a goody too shoe!
Thanksgiving eve 2004! I’ll never forget this day! t went to our party house in funkhouser. We were hosting a Thanksgiving kegger. So many ppl, so many guys, so much fun until it wasn’t! That night will probably stick with me forever because that’s the night I lost everything, I had ever worked for in the windsor community 💔!
We were playing cards, strip poker came up and I was too much of a worry wort to play. So instead AY and CH picked me up through me in the shower with all my clothes on and I abandoned ship with one of my ” friends” she was taking her brother home. What I didn’t know was when we got pulled over our vehicle would be checked. I left my purse in the back seat of that car. It had a small bowl < paraphernalia> and less than an 8th of weed in it. Here I am standing cold in my LCC hoodie I got on my campus visit. Getting arrested at 4am! I had to call my parents 
let me tell you how well that went 🤣! My family being law enforcement definitely did not make them proud! That morning, after sitting in a jail, Thanksgiving was definitely awkward…. on black Friday my parents made me go tell the only few ppl i cared about what i had done.
I walked across the street, I sat with Mrs. Keck the superintendent and cried. She was one of the kindness humans I’ll never know! That woman was my principal from prek to 6th grade and when I transferred to junior high she went to superintendent and let me tell you, knowing i let her down broke my heart but she still loved me regardless! Then the other hard ones were telling the 2 basketball coaches I couldn’t be the manager anymore destroyed me. That was the one thing I always looked forward to. I remember walking in to BW classroom and he said “the paper messed up you and your sisters name” bless his heart, he had no idea what kind of a mess I had gotten myself into! Let me tell you this though… those 2 teachers/ coaches never once let me mistakes change the way they treated me! BL/BW were 2 of the best teachers WHS ever had and thankfully now they are teaching my babies!
never did I realize that starting with Alcohol so young was going to be a gateway to a whole new world but it was. I’d love to say that this is where the story ends with alcohol, pot, and other substances but it isant! But let’s touch that another day, this story is far from being uncovered!
Until next time—-
LaceySue 💛
Rambles by LaceySue 