It's been a few chapters since I travelled back to the days when my addictions were completely out of control and I was on the fast track to eternity. I have said that I don't remember the 90's very well, if at all, and marriage #2 is a fuzzy, vodka soaked blur. I can honestly say that I don't remember what day we got married on. I do recall that it was February and it would have been in 1995 or 1996.
In the recovery part of addiction there are actions that need to be completed to reconcile with people and clean up the damage we have inflicted upon those who were around us in our using days. As I have made reference to before, the three stages of drinking are: "How are you," "I love you," and "F#*K you." Obviously the most damage is done in the third stage of inebriation. There were plenty of good memories associated with partying. It wasn't all homelessness and despair. But I can say that the times I did the most harm to the ones I loved, or cared about, occurred when I was ripped.
My second marriage lasted about 4 or 5 months. We had worked together and she was 11 years younger than me. She was beautiful and bubbly and could be called a "trophy wife." She knew I was an alcoholic. Heck, everyone knew I was. I knew I was but was comfortable with the tag. The word didn't phase me, but if you called me crazy or nuts I would go off. That angered me because it was true. She came from better stock than I did and we had absolutely nothing in common.
The age difference was hard enough to deal with. I like rock and punk. She liked hip-hop and dance. I loved books. She loved magazines. I liked culture and art. She liked watching "Friends." We were "right on" intimately but after 2 hours of work outs there are still 22 hours left in the day. Those times were the only moments we connected. She had a good heart and I think she thought she could "save" me from myself. At that point, Jesus himself couldn't talk me out of drinking and taking pills.
She had some medical issues and had been told she was unable to have children. We took no precautions since they weren't needed. After a few weeks of dating she missed her cycle and we bought a pregnancy test which happened to come up positive. We were both elated. This was our "Immaculate Conception." She had been told it was impossible, and WE defied the odds! She went to the doctor who confirmed she was pregnant. I was thrilled. I was going to be a DADDY! It was the one thing I wanted more than anything in the world.
I pictured us at Sox games and playing catch. We would eat bologna sandwiches at our first Bear game, just like me and my Pops did. It was idyllic and I obsessed about it during all of my waking moments. I was going to do the things my parents didn't have the time, or emotional availability, to do with me. I knew my new baby would give me the motivation to go on the straight and narrow. I would swear off the drink, weed, speed, pills, and all the other stuff I got off on. My little bundle of joy would be my savior from self-destruction.
We flew to Vegas. Yes! Las Vegas, the marriage capitol of the world. She was only 20. I was 31. She demanded that I not drink on the trip and she was too young to gamble. We were in Vegas! It was like going to a girlie bar and making a pact not to look at the girls. I was determined to do the right thing and give the child the Connolly name. My random nobility and twisted morality drove my decisions. This world would not carry the bastard child of Tommy Connolly!
I do not remember any of the wedding ceremony, or that entire day, for that matter. I was in a speed induced blackout. Yes, that is possible. I do remember we ended our wedding night in an argument and slept in separate beds on our honeymoon night. We spent a few days seeing the sights but neither of us were giggly newlyweds. We both sensed disaster in our procreated union. We flew home with plans for me to move into her condo in the western suburbs.
While we cleaned up my apartment in Lockport, Illinois, we found 32 empty vodka and whiskey bottles. I packed a friend's Blazer with what would fit and left the rest behind. My cat "Capone" was all I cared about. To be honest I really don't care much for cats but Capone was my family since the landlord didn't allow dogs. I also packed my album collection. It is a menagerie of classics and iconic albums. The rest was just stuff that cluttered my life. I told my neighbor Frank to take whatever he wanted from my abandoned unit. He too had tried to help me get sober but I was unreachable.
Alcoholics and addicts change boyfriends and girlfriends, we move to new places, and take new jobs thinking that these changes will snap us out of our insanity. We make plans for sobriety but after a few cajoling sips of the sauce, those plans are drank away. Addiction is happy with us no matter where we are at or who we are with as long as we are using. If someone or something tried to get us to change our ways, the disease talks us into ridding ourselves of them instead of it.
We started to play house as boy and wife, and it was rocky all the way. The only bond that kept us connected to our complete disconnection with each other was the pregnancy. 13 days after we were married we went in for her first ultrasound. She was excited and had a gorgeous smile. She beamed as the nurse began moving the x-ray like wand over her stomach. I was directed to the monitor next to her. There was little Tommy Connolly. I could see the finger and toes of my future Hall-o-Famer and his big fat melon. But the picture didn't seem right. The feelings I had turned from light to darkness.
There was only one thing that was missing from that perfect picture. It was movement and a heartbeat. It was the first of two of these scenes that I would endure in my short lived marriages. Being the first miscarriage I had ever experienced, I was crushed. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. My head filled with rage at the doctors and hate for everything crammed itself into every corner of my being. She was inconsolable. The doctors had been right in their prognosis concerning her ability to have children. She didn't see the monitor. That I am thankful for. It is burned into my mind and I can recall the vision as clearly today as that devastating day 15 years ago.
How could God be so cruel? My only wish was to be a drunken, pill popping daddy of the year. Now he did this? My drinking and drug use escalated and the relationship deteriorated by the second. The one thing that held us together had been removed. I had more reasons to fuel my liquid suicide and would soon sink to a level I couldn't conceive of even in my darkest, drunken thinking.
Truly sorry for your loss, Tommy.:(
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