The Story I Clung To
In one of my earliest posts, I wrote something I genuinely believed:
That if I were ever in dire straits, my ex-husband would step up.
That the version of him I faced during his spiral wasn’t truly who he was.
That was a lie.
A lie told to me
by me.
A lie I held onto because the truth was too heavy, too messy, too painful. And while there are a dozen reasons why I gaslit myself—childhood instability, the naive belief that love could fix anything, ignorance, fear—none of them excuse the story I kept rewriting to protect someone else at the cost of myself.
And at the cost of my children.
This past year changed that.
This past year burned every illusion to the ground.
The Truth I Can’t Unknow
He hates me.
And honestly?
I hate him too.
But not for what he did to me (okay, maybe a little), but for what he continues to do to our children.
I am done sugarcoating.
Done reframing.
Done excusing.
Done assigning blame to diagnoses, PTSD, or emotional immaturity.
He doesn’t get my sympathy, my compassion, or my protection anymore.
There are moments I can’t ignore—moments that explain a choice my children should never have needed to make.
Like the day he told our 12-year-old, who struggles with severe ADHD, that she “ruins everything.”
Do you know what that does to a child who already feels misunderstood?
She didn’t just hear it.
She believed it.
Or the nights they tiptoed around his house like emotional landmines, whispering to each other about which version of him might show up.
Kids shouldn’t have expertise in survival.
They watched him become two different people: the patient, broken, soft-spoken man he showed to his then-girlfriend and her child… and the version he revealed when the doors closed.
And still—still—they tried to love both versions.
Tried to understand him.
Tried to excuse him.
Until they couldn’t anymore.
The Choice They Shouldn’t Have Had to Make
Earlier this year, he and I agreed the kids would live with him during the school week. He makes triple my income. He bought a house in a safer district. He gave them their own rooms and expensive toys. Meanwhile, I was over here juggling overdue tags, shifting bills like Tetris pieces, living in a sketchy two-bedroom apartment.
But my children chose to come back to me.
They chose safety over comfort.
They chose emotional stability.
Children don’t give up comfort unless something far more valuable is at stake.
People love to say kids are resilient.
But resilience shouldn’t be required to survive your own parent.
The Moment Everything Broke
When the kids told him they felt safer with me, when they admitted they didn’t want to live with him because they were scared—the rest of the illusion shattered.
His behavior wasn’t temporary.
It wasn’t circumstantial.
It wasn’t something love or time could fix.
It was a choice.
And once you see that, you cannot unsee it.
Their courage forced my clarity.
They chose me—not because I had more to offer, but because what I offered was enough:
Enough presence.
Enough predictability.
Enough love without conditions.
The Fallout
A little over a month ago, they moved back in with me—midway through the school year.
The very next day, their father contacted the school to report that they were out of district. He claims it was to avoid a misdemeanor charge of mail fraud, but even after being shown the statutes confirming the kids could legally continue attending, he still argued against it.
He is now selling his house.
It has been over a week since he left our oldest on read. Before that, nearly two weeks.
This morning, I found a drawing one of my kids made—just a character design, part of a D&D/comic idea. But beneath the sketch, tucked between backstory notes, were four words that hit harder than any accusation or argument:
“I miss my dad.”
I can’t describe the feeling of reading that.
Grief and anger hit me simultaneously, but it was more than that.
It was the realization that he is choosing this.
Choosing to ignore his children.
Choosing absence.
Choosing silence.
Choosing to abandon the relationship they still, heartbreakingly, crave.
Why I’m Writing This
I’m not writing this for sympathy.
I’m not writing this to villainize him.
I’m not writing this to punish anyone.
I’m writing because silence has protected the wrong person for too long.
Telling the truth is the only way to stop pretending.
The only way to stop shrinking.
The only way to teach my kids that love should never require self-erasure.
He hates me.
Fine.
I don’t owe him the softer version anymore.
What I owe—and what I will give—is safety, stability, and honesty to the kids who chose me.
Not because I could give them more,
but because I could give them enough.
Reconstructing Cori 
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