Part 3 – High School Dreams and Hard Reality

From my blog series: “Still Standing: My Journey Through Darkness to Finding My Voice”

High school felt like a chance for a fresh start. I had survived middle school, and now I wanted something more — a future I could actually look forward to.

The school library became my second home. I threw myself into researching for a historical fiction story I was working on. Hours of reading, printing notes, and stuffing pages into my growing folder of works.

The story was dark, of course. A man brutally slaughtered his entire family, and in my version, a woman found a little girl outside a cemetery. She cared for the girl as if she were her own… until she discovered the truth.

I never finished it. Life got busy, and the writing slowed down. But the idea never left my mind.

A Big Decision

By 10th grade, I’d made up my mind — I wanted to help people. I wanted to be the safe person I never had, someone kids could trust without fear or judgment.

I applied to our local trade school for 11th and 12th grade and got accepted into the STNA (State Tested Nursing Assistant) program. I studied every day. My grades were good. Everything was going right.

Until it wasn’t.

The Truck, the Dirt bike, and the Accident

When I turned 15, my dad got me my first vehicle. It was mine to take care of — gas, maintenance, everything. I was thrilled.

By 16, I was driving my brother and his best friend to school. When my brother turned 15, my dad got him a dirt bike. After breaking several bones, he had to stop riding for a while.

The day he got his cast off, he borrowed my truck. I had a migraine and was waiting on a call for a job interview. He was impatient and wanted to take his friend home before pool league that night.

He never came home.

He wrecked my truck that day.

The Spiral

Missing my clinicals meant I failed out of the STNA program. That’s when I started drinking — hard.

I switched to the computer tech program, where I discovered I loved creating digital projects. But I was showing up to school drunk, drinking in class, going home drunk, and repeating the cycle.

Somehow, I still graduated in 2016 with a 3.7 GPA. Schoolwork had never been my problem — life was.

I was accepted to Shawnee State University, but by then I was adding pills to the mix and had stopped counseling. When my dad had a stroke, I dropped out and moved back home.

My drinking only got worse. There are entire weeks I don’t remember.

A Choice That Saved My Life

One night, after a series of seizures from drinking, my boyfriend gave me an ultimatum:Alcohol or him.

I chose him.

We weaned me off alcohol, and by 2018, I was no longer an alcoholic after four years of dependency. I still drank occasionally, but I never let myself fall back into that place again.

Stay tuned for part four!