TJ 2010 - Part 2 of 5

[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. 

This is a long, long piece written while I was in pretrial detention but is not actually notes about pretrial detention. I quite preposterously labeled it as autobiography. However, the first 36 pages are missing, and so are the years 1978–May 1982. sch 5/4/2026] 

By 1983, TJ and I had been dating for about four years. She had been with me at Grandma Downes' funeral and at Grandpa Hasler's funeral. We had gone to all of her friends' weddings but one. I had proposed to her three times. There came a day a few months afterward when we learned she was pregnant.

TJ told me her plan was for an abortion. Being brought up as I had been, I acquiesced and supported her decision. Then she told me that I was not to go along with her to the abortion clinic. She might as well have hit me with a sledgehammer. 

The night of the day TJ went to the abortion clinic, and I went to a friend's house with a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. I also had a set of shot glasses inherited from my Grandfather Hasler. Someone had a bottle of Jagermeister liqueur. I started chasing bourbon with liqueur. Someone else showed up with beer. Wild Turkey chased by Jagermeister was chased with beer. One person suggested we go to a bar. When I expressed enthusiasm for this idea, everyone else decided it was not a good idea. They were afraid I would get into a fight. I was sure I was not in a fighting mood. My friend's wife said I broke her screen door, but I did not. I did break a glass by throwing it across the street just to hear it break.

 I had the worst hangover of my life the next morning. I left my friend's house for the next morning looking for a hangover cure and to TJ. (My best hangover cure consisted of a rare steak and an ice cold Coca-Cola; they had the effect of pushing out the poison.) I found TJ very unhappy with me. She thought I had told everyone what was going on with us. I never mentioned anything about why I was drinking so seriously. I did not tell anyone about her pregnancy and going to the abortion clinic until many, many years.

Things became ticklish between TJ and me. That I had not bought her the ring she wanted for an engagement ring caused her great annoyance. That I was saving money for the ring was unknown to her. When I bought a very cheap guitar, she broke off the engagement. She did this two weeks before I would have had the engagement ring paid off.

 We still dated. We still owrked together at the bar. I still loved her. What I did not know was that she remained pregnant.

I did not know she had not had the abortion until one afternoon in my apartment she began to miscarry. She fell to the floor, crying, and lay there in a fetal position. She was bleeding and bleeding. I made to take her to the hospital, but she yelled her insistence that her friend Kathy take her instead. So, Kathy came to take her to the hospital, leaving me to think how close I had come to killing her. She called me later to let me know that she was all right.

Sex with TJ became problematic for me. I looked upon sex with her as having injured her, of almost killing her.  The idea of me posing a danger to those I loved became firmly established in my mind.

We stopped talking about this time. No, we talked, but we did not say anything about what was important to us. I regressed at this point. TJ had broken down most of the wall I had erected around me. Now, I put them up again. Let me say here that self-knowledge does not always provide a corrective. I repeated this same foolishness with T1, T2, CC, and my wife. Let me also say that my family law experience showed me that at the bottom of almost every case was a failure of communication. All that knowledge does nothing to salve the injury caused.

 [Continued in TJ 2010 - Part 3 of 5. sch 5/4/26.]