A new start

In life there are many different types of endings. There are the ones that make you laugh, make you happy, make you sad and cry, the ones that leave you wanting more and then there are the ones that are not really an end but rather a new beginning. But life is not all about endings it is about all the new beginnings. 

I am here to say that I am starting the next chapter in my life. Raylyn and I are no longer together and I do not see this as a sad ending to our story, yes at first I did, but I see this as a great start for a new chapter in my life. All I can say is that I'm happy now really in truly happy, I can finally be me, I can try new things, and I can start living my dream.

I have always believed that God puts people in out lives for a reason, sometimes these people are just meant to pass by, stay for a short while, or be there our entire lives. And even though the reasons may not always be clear to us we just have to trust his will and follow the path he has laid out for us.

So this is not where my story ends but where a new one begins.  

Our First House

I don’t know many people who at the ages of 17 and 18 own their own house, but we do. I remember a year ago searching for the perfect house. I think we looked at a dozen houses a weekend. Then we found it, well so I thought, it was the perfect! It was a cute little two bedroom one bath, nice kitchen, the perfect detached garage for Raylyn to have his “man cave” in, the sweetest little back yard and deck. I thought we had found the perfect house for us to get started in but then it came time for the inspection and all that came crashing down. Everything was wrong in this house, I mean EVERYTHING! The guy who “flipped” this house just made things do and tried to cover up his sloppy not to code work, I got so upset. I thought we would never find a house after that. Then we pulled in the drive way of this tacky little red white and blue house trash under the steps and old paint cans on the front deck, inside the walls were these crazy ugly colors, the kitchen was old and very outdated and the back fence looked like it was falling apart, the only good thing about this house was the remodeled bathroom. But it was perfect, I could just picture me and Raylyn living here, I could see us having our first baby here, I absolutely loved it. I was so excited when the inspection came back good and I couldn’t wait for us to get started painting over those ugly colors and updating the kitchen.  Looking back now I am so glad that first house didn’t work out because we live in such a good neighborhood we have the BEST neighbors who take care of us, we live in a great school district for any future kids and we have a back yard and house big enough for us to get a puppy!

December 22

“I Raylyn Ayers take you Stacie Ledbetter to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, to care and protect, to comfort and encourage you, and to stay with you, for all of eternity.”

 I will never forget the sound of Raylyn’s voice while reading his vows or the smile on his face when I said I do or that feeling when we kissed for the first time as Mr. and Mrs. Ayers.  Yeah it wasn’t the wedding I had always dreamed about but it was PERFECT! There are no words that could ever describe the way I felt knowing Raylyn would never have to go back to that place ever again and I was going to get to spend the rest of my life with my prince charming. We aren’t perfect, yes we have our fights but there will NEVER come a day when I will stop loving Raylyn, he is my everything and I could never ask for more.

I hear wedding bells!

Okay so trusting Raylyn’s dad to come up with most of the plan was a big mistake since there turned out to be not much of a plan after all but oh well. The night we planned to leave we lucked out since Raylyn and his brother were left home alone. This made it really easy for Raylyn’s friend to drive by pick him up and make their way to meet me and Raylyn’s dad.  Then this is where things made a bad turn and I thought our plan wasn’t going to work and I would never see Raylyn again. Of course since Raylyn left his mom and step dad a note letting them know he was with his dad so they wouldn’t worry about him, they found out pretty soon where he was and they started blowing up mine, my moms, Raylyn’s dad’s and just about anyone else’s phones demanding that Raylyn come back home. Then Raylyn’s dad being an idiot instead of heading to N.C. goes back into town to meet a friend, why he felt like this was the best time to hang out with his friends like a little kid I don’t know but I was ready to just leave him behind and jump to plan B, take the notarized letter from his dad saying it was okay and go to Las Vegas and get married there without his dad.  Finally after about an hour we finally got on the interstate and went on our way. Then of course we got lost. How his dad managed to get lost I have no idea since we were following the signs but I guess in the time me and Raylyn dosed off he took a wrong turn or something.  Finally we got back going the right way and made it but it was two in the morning and we had to wait until eight for the courthouse to open so we parked the car and me and Raylyn went to sleep. When we woke up we went and found the courthouse which with our luck was under construction and a lot of the offices were closed but once again we lucked out since the ones we needed were open. Now we start filling out paper work and what not and that’s when it hit me, I AM ABOUT TO GET MARRIED!!!

What to do next?

So now that the planning has begun Raylyn brings up his father, who I have been told can’t help us because of his own person issues he is facing, but I push that behind me since I don’t know what all Raylyn has been told about his father because he has never talked about him before. Then Raylyn tells me that he had been talking to his dad and he can help us but he wants me to go talk to him first. Okay so now I freak out just a little bit, one because of the things I have been told about him and two Raylyn wants me to go meet his dad WITHOUT him. But because I love Raylyn I agreed for me and my mom to go talk to him since I am NOT meeting this guy by myself. So that Friday after school me and mom go on our way to go meet Raylyn’s dad and yes I am extremely nervous about this since Raylyn has high hopes that after I talk to his dad he will be able to fix everything. So we meet his dad and he made a really good first impression because instead of it just being Raylyn’s dad, my mom and me which could have been really weird he took us to his mother’s house. This made me feel a little bit better about this whole thing. We talked for long time and granny brought out the baby pictures (Raylyn was a CUTE baby, you know you have cute babies then you have CUTE babies) but after all that talking all I got out of it was that Raylyn could try to come live with his dad but there was a possibility that it wouldn’t work. So the next day I talk to Raylyn about everything I learned at his dad’s and Raylyn then decided it wasn’t worth the risk that it wouldn’t work, so we made a decision that would change our lives forever……we decided that we would go ahead and get married now. This was a big deal for me since I have always wanted the big fairy tale wedding but if giving that up to get married at the courthouse was the only way to help Raylyn then I was willing to throw my big dreams away. Now the researching begins to find a county somewhere, anywhere where Raylyn would only need one parent to sign since he was only 17 and his mom and step dad signing the papers, well that was OUT of the question. I looked and looked and called and called to the point that I broke down thinking that this was never going to work when finally I found a little county in North Carolina where we would be able to get married, you have no idea how excited I was. I let Raylyn and his dad know what I found and the papers they needed to get together and we started planning our trip to little Murphy, North Carolina.

Too much for one girl to handle

Now that I have finally found out that Raylyn was living in an abusive home I didn’t know what to do next, all I knew was I had to help him. Seeing him, the guy I’ve liked for years, being hurt like that hurt my heart. So I decided that this was not something I could take on myself so I went to the one person in my life I know I can go to for anything, my mom. I asked her what I should do because this has apparently been going on for way to long and I couldn’t just sit back and ignore the fact that Raylyn was being hurt both mentally and physically every day. So me and mom came to the agreement that this wasn’t something that we could take care of ourselves so we called someone we knew who could. After talking to them we knew that the best thing to do would be for Raylyn to go to DHR and report his abuse since going to live with his real father was not an option. So the planning began. We decided that one day I would pick him up before school and we would go talk to someone at DHR about this situation.  So once we got to the DHR office we waited for what felt like to long then finally someone called out his name and he went back to talk to someone. I on the other hand still had to wait and wait and wait but at this point I didn’t care because I thought I was waiting so long because someone was going to get him out of this situation.  Finally Raylyn came out and got me and I thought this meant good news. Then the lady went on to tell us that since he was 17 he had just one more year left before he is 18 and can move out and since he has put up with it for that long what’s one more year. Okay I promise I’m not one to yell at people but I wanted so badly to give this woman a piece of my mind. How could she say that I mean really! Raylyn just sat in her office and told her it was so bad he has tried to kill himself many times just so he wouldn’t have to put up with it any longer. So we left seeing as they wouldn’t do anything for him and went back to school. Well it’s not long before his mom finds out what he did since DHR called to make her aware of her sons “suicidal state”, yeah because that’s the big problem, right? You would think the lady at DHR would have enough sense to know that when a kid comes in her office to tell her he is being abused by his parents and they don’t know he came to talk to her to not call his parents since it would make the situation worse, you would think but I guess not. Raylyn at this point never wants to go home again since he knows what is going to happen when he gets home. So with me being afraid that it’s going to get worse I go to my best friend since she knows everything and we, along with Raylyn, came up with a plan to run away. No I wasn’t the biggest fan of this idea, I had no reason to be running away, I’ve never even thought about running away but I couldn’t let Raylyn go back to that place. This was our only hope.

Football Season

Now our summer is coming to an end since he has football practice in the morning and I have color guard practice later in the day. With our conflicting schedules we aren’t getting to see each other as often as we were used to but we decided that even if we only got to see each other for a few minutes every day then that was okay since some is better than none. Once school started the only time we really got to see each other was when we were passing each other in the hall, when we were getting something out of our locker or if we were lucky on Thursdays football practice would end around the same time as band practice did and lucky for us we parked almost right beside each other. Yes we would get to see each other on some Saturdays or Sunday after noon’s but it still wasn’t what we had grown used to over the summer when we were together every day. So soon I started having band competitions on Saturday and Raylyn was such a sweet boyfriend since he came to all the ones he could. Little did I know the day of Morgan county night of bands when my color guard friends got me out of the house that was the day Raylyn asked my mom if he could marry me! I know most people don’t think anything about that anymore but to me it meant a lot that he loved me enough to ask my mom. So by now I have put that hurt look in his eyes on the way back from the beach behind me since I hadn’t seen it since and he never said anything. But then about a week or so after he asked my mom if he could someday marry me I started to see that look come through every day. One night when he called me he sounded up set so I finally asked him what was he not telling me, what was going on at home. That’s when he broke down, I never pictured Raylyn as the kind of guy to fall to tears but he did and I was scared. He started to tell me how he couldn’t take it anymore that life wasn’t worth living if it was this hard. I couldn’t understand why he was saying this so I very timidly asked him to tell me why. And that’s when I learned why he had that hurt look in his eyes. And for the first time with him I had nothing to say, it was all I could do to keep from crying too.

Senior Summer

Well now that Raylyn is officially my boyfriend I am the happiest girl in the world, yeah I’ve liked him for years so I deserve to be happy, right? So I would consider Raylyn to be my first “real boyfriend”. Why do I say this well we are constantly together any chance we get. I’m dragging him to my family get togethers, begging him to come help me and mom clean out the garage, and any other reasons I could come up with to see him. So of course my mom likes him at this point since he is helping mow the yard, cleaning out the garage, putting together furniture, and fixing the riding lawn mower but most importantly because he makes me happy. So now that I’m dragging him everywhere with me he begins to take me to his family’s cookouts and Memorial Day “parties”. And to my surprise his mom really seems to like me. She has started to brag to other family members how it’s about time Raylyn got a girl that won’t get him in to trouble and she can trust us together, I guess it just surprised me since I haven’t really talked to her much since once again I’m really shy and care WAY to much about what other people think about me. So now it’s been about three months since he asked me to be his girlfriend and it’s our senior summer so I decide that we need to do something. So I plan a trip for me him and my mom to go to six flags. Now it’s the day before we were going to go to six flags and my back starts to hurt really bad so me and mom decide that six flags might not be the best idea so mom calls and talks to his mom about us going to gulf shores for the weekend and to both mine and Raylyn’s surprise she says its fine. So now we are on our way to the beach and of course I start to feel sick (me and road trips are not friends) and I am beyond embarrassed. But Raylyn was so sweet and let me use him as a pillow so I could sleep the whole way there. We stayed at a hotel in Mobil and it was right beside a little park called alligator alley so of course Raylyn wanted to go see the alligators (I am terrified of alligators, well any animal I know could eat me for a snack) but since I knew Raylyn wouldn’t let anything hurt me I decided to be brave.  We spent the entire weekend at the beach, down by the pool and looking for alligators but soon our weekend was over and it was time to head home. This is when I noticed that things at Raylyn’s house were a little off since his step dad made him text him and let him know what mile marker we were passing on the interstate. What parent does that? I mean it’s not like we had told them we would be back at a specific time or anything. It hit maybe five o’clock and he got a phone call from his angry step dad wanting to know why we were running late and after that phone call for the first time I saw a side of Raylyn I had never seen before. I could see the hurt in his eyes and could tell that he did not want to go home but at this point I didn’t know why. We got home to moms house a few hours after he had gotten that phone call so he quickly unloaded his stuff from the car and told mom bye and thanks for letting him go with us. Then he said bye to me and his not wanting to go home became more obvious but I didn’t say anything, we said our byes and he was on his way home. It wasn’t until later the next day that I heard from him again but I was too afraid to say anything about what I had noticed the day before.

 

April 2, 2011

Well, now it is the day after prom. Hardly an hour has gone by since Raylyn has left my house and I get a text from him saying that he really enjoyed “hanging out” but in a more boyish fashion. Me still being on my "the guy I’ve liked for years just kissed me" high asked him out of the blue, “Okay you kissed me, what does that make us now?” That is very unlike me since I am really shy and care way too much about what other people think about me. It took him what felt like years and years and years to answer me and when he finally answered he said, "Well you’re my girlfriend of course, why else would I have kissed you?" Okay so now I’m feeling really dumb because the way he had put that, it made me feel like I should have known that and never asked him where we stood. Then another high hits-OH MY GOODNESS he just said I was his GIRLFRIEND. Woo!! Now I have been waiting for forever for him to even notice me and now after just talking to him for maybe give or take a week I can call this boy my boyfriend. Okay this just made my year. Wait no my life. Yeah I was that excited but hey, give this girl a break.  Imagine if you were in my shoes and the “hot” football player you’ve had a crush on for years just said you, the shy little band geek, was his girlfriend. Wouldn’t you be excited too?  So this  is where our story begins on April 2, 2011.

Prom night.

Prom night seems like it came right out of a Cinderella story…kind of.  I had asked one of my friends, Caleb, from out of town to go to prom with me so I wouldn’t have to go by myself. The day started out like most Saturdays do, with me not wanting to get out of bed. But once I realized it was prom day I jumped right up. Yeah, I was excited but the guy who I’ve liked since sixth grade and who I’ve been I guess you could say “talking to” for a couple of days now was going to be there. After lunch, Mom started to help me get ready. This girl LOVES great deals and what’s a better deal than not spending a bunch of money on prom hair and letting your mom fix it since she’s been fixing your hair for all of your figure skating and twirling years. Then it came time for the dress which I was very excited about since, again, I love great deals. I bought the dress on sale at a department store, then mom made some alterations. She made the skirt under the frilly part longer by adding some lace and she added some straps. I mean, we have all heard the prom horror stories about the guy trying to get in the girl's dress so no way was I going to wear a strapless dress. After I was ready we headed to my Grandmollie’s house to take pictures. This was... I guess you could say... funny because later I found out that Raylyn went to his grandmother’s house to take pictures too but that’s not all... some of our pictures actually turn out pretty much the same.Then we headed to the place Caleb and his family stayed at for the weekend since he was from out of town. So now that I’m with my date we headed on our way to go meet up with Raylyn and his group at Outback. Yeah out of all places they picked Outback. I was somewhat worried about how dinner would go since I did not really know any of the people we were eating with other than Raylyn and Caleb. I was trying my best to not make Caleb feel out of place but I’m afraid it became too obvious that I was “with” Raylyn. Finally our awkward dinner was over and we all headed our own ways to prom at the Holiday Inn (yeah our school was cheap). We hadn’t been there long when I decided that since my date didn’t want to dance and I was too shy to try to dance we went to my house. But then Caleb fell asleep so I sent him on his way. Raylyn called and asked if he could come over since he didn’t want to go home. So me, being the chicken I am, asked mom if I could have some friends over. Once Raylyn got there mom teased me about not being brave enough to just ask if Raylyn could come over. We sat outside by the fire place and talked for a long time but that all ended when his mom called and said it was passed time he came home. We went in the house to let mom know he was leaving. Then we went outside so I could tell him bye and then he KISSED me! Oh my goodness the guy I’ve liked since sixth grade KISSED me!!!! I was so excited I didn’t know what to do.  But then to ruin a perfect moment his mother called again and he had to leave.

How did it all start?

In sixth grade I moved to a new school and didn’t know anyone. Being a shy soft spoken person, I was afraid I’d never make a friend but I soon had my first friend, Ashley, and she convinced me to go to the upcoming “back to school dance”. I know, pretty ironic, but that is where I first met Raylyn. So they started playing a “slow song” and Ashley decided I had to dance with someone. I will never forget her forcing Raylyn to come dance with me, the shy new girl. It wasn’t until our sophomore year of high school that I really talked to Raylyn again, but I will admit that ever since Ashley made me dance with him I started to have a crush on him. Raylyn had decided that he liked my best friend Victoria so I began to see a lot more of him but this phase soon passed. After seeing more of him that little crush I had sparked up again. Junior year we FINALLY had a class together and I liked him even more at this point but ever so sadly he had a girlfriend who he was always with and he started going into this “bad boy” phase (at least that’s what he calls it) so I thought there was no hope and I started to give up. Then one day during our one class together we got put into groups, it was me, my best friend Victoria, Raylyn and his best friend Sam in a group. Me and Victoria ended up doing most of the work (of course) but joking around with him made me have hope that maybe one day he would like me. That night when I got home I was on Facebook and noticed he was online so I sent him a message that said “you’re crazy.” Yeah, I know, what was I thinking? I was trying to make him like me ,not run him off, but that’s all I could think of. It was around prom time and I was looking for a group to go with so I got brave and directed our conversation towards prom. I asked if I could go with his group and he said yes then what he said next made me completely fall head over heels…he said “text me”. Yeah I know I’m lame….but what can I say I’ve liked this boy since the sixth grade. If you think I was all giddy over him just telling me to text him just wait until you find out what happens next…

Just a little about me

Where to begin…you already know my name is Stacie so…. Well I was born and raised in a small town in Alabama. It has always been just me, my mom and our cats (all of which were rescue animals). I think because it was always just me and mom I was able to do a lot more things that I wanted to like twirling baton with the Dixie Darlings or being a competitive figure skater for what seems like forever to what has now become a major part of my life, learning to play the flute. My grandmother (who I call Grandmollie, no her name is not Mollie that’s just what I wanted to call her …… I guess) also played a major role in my life along with her dear friend Dean who was my father figure. Grandmollie made it possible for me to do a lot of the things I wanted to do over the years and I don’t know what I would do without her. It was sometime during the beginning of the second semester of my freshman year of high school that I got a phone call late one night from my half-sister, Jessica, telling me that our father had been killed in a tragic car crash. It was then that I realized I would never get the chance to really get to know my real dad, but then I remembered that God has a plan for everyone and maybe me having a real relationship with my father wasn’t supposed to be.  A couple years after that I got the worst news I had ever gotten in my life so far, my Daddy Dean had lost his battle with cancer. I will never forget that day in September of 2010 that my mom came and got me from school and I tried my very best to act like I was okay when inside I was falling to pieces, but once again I had to have faith in God and know that my Daddy Dean would always be watching over me. The next big thing that would happen in my life was very exciting. December 22, 2011 I married my prince charming, but we will get to that later. Once I graduated high school I wanted nothing else but to be a UAB Blazer. So that brings us to where I am today, a very proud UAB student studying Music Education and Political Science living in my own house with the man of my dreams.

Lets get started!

Hey, I'm Stacie I decided to start writing a blog since I've been told by many friends and family members that I should write a book about the past couple of years of my life, but I'm not much of a writer .... so I figured I would go this route. Why is my life so interesting people think it should be a book you ask? Well I am 19 and I have been happily married for a year and a half now. Why is this such a major accomplishment you say? The road to getting married was not easy since I had a mother-in-law who was willing to do ANYTHING to stop our marriage from happening, everything my husband, Raylyn, and I went through would play out much like a lifetime movie. Even though Raylyn's family was not very supportive we had my family and our friends to help get us past this very difficult time. I don't want to give to much away since this is only the beginning of my story but I will leave you with the knowing of if I had the chance to go back and do any of what I have been threw again I wouldn't change a thing. I believe that God puts you in people lives for a reason and he has a plan for your life you just have to have faith that everything will work out the way he has planned.