There are a multitude of rooms of assorted variety placed upon my foundation. Some of my rooms are filled with comfort, sorrow, great joy and dreamed filled memories. Some rooms are planted with many seeds of imagination, some house elves of childish fun, there are rooms lined with shelves of creativity and some with impish gaiety. I have rooms of quiet smiles, ticklish laughter and relaxed well-being, which are places that are well cared for, protected and tended in my heart and mind.
Most of the rooms in my home of life are nice places to be, although there are also rooms of disharmony and pain, with locks placed upon their doors only to be entered in the loving protection of my Lord Jesus Christ and trusted friends. In love and trust I will allow entry for those who will care for me in these rooms of discord. All of these rooms and many, many more are all part of me and a part of my life which has formed over the years into the structure of who I am today.
The beginning of my structure came to life on July 15, 1954 in Grants Pass, Oregon. I was born to the loving parents, Robert and Dolores McLaughlin, the younger sister of Denice(Deni) and David. And in two and a half years I was to become the older sister of Bobbi.
The first few years of my life I spent in rooms that were named by my parents. Rooms in which they put upon my foundation for the beginning of my home. Rooms that were carefully colored with love. Some of the names of the rooms were: 'stable home life, guidance, caring, trust, cuddling, holding Mamas hand and music.
As a small child I was always amazed with the world around me. I had a great love for all creatures and I was happy being out in the world of nature. I loved the times I would be all alone with the company of a kitty, or a puppy or my most favorite, a horse. Sometimes I liked just sitting and watching everything around me to see what life was all about.
This was the time I built one of my first rooms. It was called, "comfortable with me". It was a place that I went to often and no one else knew about. Another of of my rooms of early childhood that was one of my best places to be was my, "I love horses" room. This is where I would keep ( and still do), all of my fantasies, hopes and dreams about all the horses that I loved. Some were real, some were imaginary, some, I've owned and many that I didn't.
All was fine and cozy in my loving family and in myself as a young child, but as I began to get a little older, things began to happen inside of myself. It began with hearing whispered conversations that contained my name. I don't recall all of the things that were said, but one I do remember was, "It was the fever she had, that's why she is the way she is". I remember times when I got a bad grade and my parents would say, "why can't you be more like Deni and David?"
During that time of my childhood, I built two new rooms onto my home. One was called, "confusion" and the other called, "worthless." I would go into these rooms when I was troubled with myself and try to piece together what it was that was wrong with me. I never found the answer and maybe there never was a question, but it must have been built next to my "comfotable with me" room because even though I felt worthless, I knew that I wasn't.
As a child my favorite room to go to was my, "when I grow up" room. I knew when I grew up I would be able to do whatever I wanted and no one could say anything about it. I knew when I grew up I would marry a man, and have lots of kids, a white house with yellow trim, a white picket fence and a barn with lots of animals, especially horses. When I grew up I would be able to kiss frogs and dogs, save bugs, rescue lost kittens, not clean my room and sit for hours all by myself. I wouldn't have to listen to my parents ideas about what it is like to be in a "grown up" room because their "grown up" rooms were different than mine. I wouldn't have to worry about people understanding me and it wouldn't matter because I understood myself well enough. It was a room filled with happy things, fun things and a childs faith that life was meant to be absolutely wonderful and good. All the "bad" things would go away, when I grew up.
As I got older into my early teens I tried very hard to be how other people were, but it was something that was beyond my understanding. My older sister was very pretty, went to college, had lots of jobs, got married to a handsome man, had babies, was involved with church, was responsible, had lots of friends, had a beautiful singing voice and was highly admired by my parents. My younger sister was pretty, got good grades, was liked by boys, had lots of friends, had a beautiful singing voice, was the baby of the family, liked me and was admired by my parents. At that time I built two new rooms onto my home. The were called, "I'm weird" and "I'm jealous". I was not pretty, did lousy in school, did not have friends, I thought a lot about boys and sex, I didn't know where my place in our family was, I didn't like myself (except in my "comfortable with me" room) , dressed funny, had weird hair, kids made fun of me, I wasn't responsible and my parents wondered why I was different.
During my fifteenth year another room was built. It was a memory room called "Rosie, my puppy love." It was filled with a year and a half of someone who liked me and loved me for who I was. We fed calves on the farm, went to movies and went to the livestock auction barn. I rode my horse to round up the milk cows for milking time and we became first time lovers for each other. I had finally found a place where I belonged. I began to experience some of the things that lay about in my "when I grow up" room Many new rooms were built during this time, such as: "I am lovable, I am an okay person, I am a useful person and my "I like life room". They were rooms that fit in quite well with those that had been built in early childhood My other rooms that made me feel bad began to gather dust as I was not in them much. This was a cheerful building time in my life.
Late into my sixteenth year, (July 3, 1970 to be exact), my life built a new room (which set a record for construction time) that was put up in less than a minute. It was entitled, "Love at First Sight (or True Love)". The day was warm and sunny inside and out and I fell head over heels in love with a guy by the name of Ted Tisdel. If life had been good before, now it was grand. I rearranged my "when I grow up" room. Putting the animals, the house, the picket fence and the kids into boxes, I set them on shelves and replace them with TED. It didn't matter what else I ever got in life so long as I got it with him. Most of the next two years were fun, happy, sweet, full of true love and exhilaratingly wonderful. I got a ring and we were engaged to be married.
And then came along two new rooms. One room had the name PAIN boldly lettered on its' door and the other room was called "My mom understands me". Ted had told me that he was enlisting in the army for at least two years and would be leaving in a couple of weeks. My pain room began as a small room but it was built with flexible wallboard (not the only room of its' kind). It was wallboard that throughout the years, I found, could be expanded at the touch or the word of persons in my life or by uncontrollable events. A room where all I could do was sit in agony and just hurt. Over time I have come to the conclusion that I own that room and that it is mine. Today I have some control over who I allow near the walls and the door, and I do not need to sit in it all alone but can invite others in. :^)
The next year of my life I built a new room that is not is use in my home anymore (although it is still there). It is a room that I built to escape my room of "pain". A room that I spent much of the next fifteen years living in. It is called, "My Garbage Pit". It began as a room of fun and happy times, with a drink in my hand. It ended with me being buried under the garbage of my life that was created by my having too many drinks in my hand. Ohhh, how long I labored, how many times I tried to bury my room of "pain" with a drink of alcohol, but as God has His special ways the door to my "pain" room was never properly sealed and so I always felt just a little bit of pain in my life. Just enough pain to finally accept the help that was offered to me by His messengers fifteen years later.
In December of 1972, I began once again to live in my "when I grow up" room (actually, I was escaping my parents rules so could drink). I got married and had a baby, Michele Lee, in June of 1973. The marriage was not one built on love, it was built on pregnancy and soon ended in October of 1973. At long last I was free from the rule of parents, marriage and the role of being a child. I built a new room........"Freedom".
No more "when I grow up", I was grown up. Alcohol had a firm hold on my by this time so the dreams of childhood things became the realities of an alcoholics life. No more white picket fences for me! Just broken down homes to live in, drunken parties to take my daughter to, laughter to take the place of an aching heart inside and babies that were never given the chance to live. This and much more was 'freedom'. Freedom to do as I wanted and, I wanted to drink.
It was in the room of 'Freedom' that I rented my first apartment. There were rows of apartments that looked just like mine. And the people who lived in them liked to drink just like me. And most of us were on welfare or unemployment. I had experimented with drugs before but this was drug heaven. Parties all the time, night and day. Drugs of all kinds and easy to get. Speed, mescaline, acid, MDA, pink hearts, etc...and of course, the everlovin' alcohol! And the friends! Was I ever lucky to have so many friends. We were a group of good tight friends, sharing everything from drugs to relationships. This building of my 'freedom' room got very cluttered with confusion, hurt, and pain much of the time. Living as the free spirit I thought I was, collided with the very morals and values I had been taught as a child. It was like mixing oil and water. It will appear to blend for a while but in reality, (which drugs didn't allow me to live in) Christianity and my free spirit life style did not blend at all. Which was why the next room, "Serious Love", never had a chance to become a permanent, 'til death do we part', place in my life. "Serious Love".....when I met Tom, the love I felt was so intense it took my breath away and my body felt like rubber. Our first date was a hike into a lake in the mountains on a moonlite night. Sitting beside one another in front of a campfire...amongst friends...high on speed, the love was electric!!
Another room that was built during this time was, "shooting drugs". Many of my friends used needles, I swore I never would. Until one night, high on reds and alcohol, I needed something to lift me up so I could keep partying. Someone said, shoot speed!!! So, I did. Sitting in a chair arm outstretched, the needle went in....that was the last thing I knew until the next day.
My dad called me that day and asked if I was ready to go get that little colt. Someone had given me a 6 month old colt. 'Sure', I said ( I wasn't). So off we went, picked him up and took him to my sister Deni's house where I was living at the time. I put him in a pasture with an older horse named Joe. The following day, I called the vet to come out and do a vet check on him. We searched the field and at first couldn't find him. Then the vet came to me and said, " have you ever seen 'The Godfather'"? Well, "yes I had", I said. "Well if you could handle that then I hope you can handle this". And there on the forest ground lay my baby...dead...half of his haunches and neck eaten away. Tears streaming down my face, I ran into my sisters house. She followed me into the back room and found out what happened. Then the strangest thing happened. She said, "I think this is the time". About 5 months prior to this day, a friend of hers had stopped by to visit. When she left, she left a bible verse with my sister. Deni had set the piece of paper in her desk, never reading the verse. She went to her desk, got out the piece of paper with the bible verse on it, 'Zephaniah 2 3:1-3', and her bible. The verse reads as follows:
"Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city! She obeyed not the voice; she received not correction; she trusted not in the Lord; she drew not near to her God. Her princes within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves; they gnaw not the bone til the 'morrow."
That was the only time I ever put a needle in my arm. Exactly what those verses are suppose to mean, I don't know. To me it was a sign that there really was a God and he wanted me to stop living the way I was and to follow His will. Throughout the years after that, when I thought there was no God, that incident would always smash through my denial. These four years held most of my heavy drug use although I did use drugs off and on until 1986.(end of update)
I lived in my room of "freedom" for about four years when I began to get tired of it and I craved a relationship with a man who would settle down with me and help me in my quest of a "good" life. And as fate would have it, along came another room entitled, "Real True Love". It was love that made my knees go weak, my stomach felt as though it was breeding butterflies and it was based on how well our drunken natures fit together. We were married on June 23, 1977 and became the parents of Stacy Erin on August 1, 1977 (her biological father lived in Alaska), William Clayton on January 18, 1981 and Mahri Allison on March 11, 1982. The marriage lasted seven and a half years.
During that time, through the fog of drinking, physical abuse, lack of money and no stability I tried desperately to capture some of my childhood wants, but I couldn't. No sooner would I get them and circumstances took them away. We had animals in the barn but they were sold for money to drink with. We started to build the picket fence but it never did get finished before we moved. We got the paint for the house but we never found the time to get it painted. We got the horses but the owners came and took them back because we didn't pay for them. We had the kids but they didn't have us.
Many new rooms were added to the house of my life during those seven years. There was the room of "anxiety" where I spent a lot of time in the late evenings waiting for my husband to return from the bar. The room of "abuse" (beatings I would get when he was drunk!!)still holds pictures of terror, revenge, confusion and frightened little children with big wide eyes and the room of "denial" was built in defense of the abuse. In my room of denial I knew that my husband really loved me and that all I had to do was to love him enough and in return our lives would turn into my childhood room of "when I grow up". This never happened.
In 1984 the last room of this relationship was built and it shattered every hope and dream I'd ever had for us. This room is called, "He molested my daughter."
The next two years I spent living in the rooms "My garbage pit, Pain and Denial." The garbage pit became so full of the garbage of alcoholism that the entire structure of my home and every room became flooded with the stench and filth of my existence. In my room of denial I added large banners that read, "I HAVE NO PROBLEMS WITH ALCOHOL!!!" My room of pain had expanded to the point that it threatened the other rooms of my home with extinction. There was no light left in my life and there was no hope.
In 1986, it seemed as though all the walls and the foundation of my home were cracked and crumbling into the dust of emptiness. Somehow, during that time my older sister Deni saw what was happening and called upon the foundation of her life. Through love and family, an intervention was done in my foggy life of alcohol. My children were removed from my care and put in the loving hands of my family. In December of 1986, I was given the room "Hope" at Sundown M Ranch, a treatment faciltiy for chemically dependent people. It was there in my room of hope that I knew I would die if I continued to drink. If I ever wanted to live in the good rooms of my home, I would have to stop drinking. I began to think again about the laughter and joy, smiles and flowers, children and animals, the rooms of my home and that foundation of my life. The tears still roll down my face as I remember the choice I made......
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