Reconstructing Cori

Author: reconstructingcori

  • A Post Christmas Update

    Controlled Chaos

    I desire order, but I thrive in chaos.

    Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I’m decent in the kitchen. While I’m no master chef, I do tend to get compliments—and more importantly, my kids prefer that I cook rather than us ordering out. I’m not formally trained, but it’s a skill I’ve been honing for upwards of thirty years now.

    I’ve been in the kitchen since I was big enough to push a chair to the stove. While most of my ability, skill, and intuition came from necessity—having to prepare meals for a family of five or more starting around age eight or nine—some of it came from my maternal grandmother. She was patient enough to answer my random questions while showing me how to peel potatoes, fry cornbread, and slice bananas to uniform thickness for puddin’.

    What I enjoy most about preparing a meal is that it’s a kind of controlled chaos.

    There are known reactions—garlic hitting hot oil will always be intoxicating—but there are also variables. A burner runs hot. An ingredient is missing. Something spills. Any one of those things can dramatically change the outcome.

    When you grow up poor, you learn the basics quickly. If the food isn’t edible, you don’t just go hungry—you risk making others go without as well. And if you mess up, everyone lets you know. There’s no running back to the store. No borrowing from neighbors, because they don’t have it either. You use what you have, no more and no less. There’s very little margin for error.

    So I learned to make adjustments on the fly. How to start with one meal in mind and, due to circumstance, wind up with something entirely different. And even if it’s not what I originally planned, it’s still going to be nourishing, filling, and often delicious.

    It’s a skill.
    It’s an art.
    It’s an analogy for my life.

    The last month has been a reminder that life rarely follows the recipe you start with.

    Before Christmas, my fourteen-year-old asked her dad if she would see him. His response wasn’t yes or no—it was that they were going to spend Christmas with me and that he wouldn’t force them to see him.

    They’re texting now, sporadically, but he still doesn’t respond to me. And he hasn’t spoken to our twelve-year-old at all, outside of a Christmas Day text. They haven’t seen him since early November.

    There’s no dramatic confrontation here. No explosive argument. Just absence.

    And absence, I’ve learned, is its own kind of message. One that’s heard loud and clear by everyone.

    For Christmas, their dad sent money. Which is helpful—it buys things—but it doesn’t sit across from you at the table. It doesn’t ask questions. It doesn’t show up when things are uncomfortable. It doesn’t give advice or lend an ear when you need it.

    I’m fully moved in with my love, who, for the sake of things, I’ll simply refer to as Mr.

    The girls are sharing a room, for now. It’s okay, mostly. They’re already getting on each other’s nerves, which feels less like a problem and more like proof of normalcy. Adjustment noises—screams, groans, the occasional curse word. Growing pains.

    As for me and my Mr., I could not be more in love. But being seen—being appreciated—can be uncomfortable. I still deal with my own triggers and insecurities, and I often assign negative intentions to innocuous conversations. I struggle the most with text messages. I tend to read them as if he’s always angry or disappointed in me, although that’s never his intended tone.

    Old wiring doesn’t disappear just because the storm has passed. It takes time to dig new pathways and clear away old debris.

    It probably doesn’t take as much time as the construction on 270, though.
    (Get it together, St. Louis.)

    And yet, my Mr. just keeps showing up. Time after time. In ways I didn’t realize were going to matter, but now I know I can’t—and won’t—live without.

    I am constantly amazed at how present he is.

    He noticed what the girls were actually into. Band t-shirts for the fourteen-year-old. Robux and genuine interest in the twelve-year-old’s info-dumps. Not generic gifts. Not placeholders. Them.

    Me. This may have been the best Christmas I’ve ever had as an adult. I wasn’t showered in gifts, but the things I did receive showed how much he listens and how much he thinks about me—actions I am not used to seeing.

    Us. This past weekend, he showed up for my fourteen-year-old in an awkward, important moment her dad should have been there for. When I called my Mr. and asked if he would take her, meet the people involved, and verify authenticity, he didn’t hesitate.

    He just did it.
    And then he called me with an update.

    The amount of constant consideration he shows for others is astounding.

    I don’t think the girls’ dad even knows about the event—or really much about anything that’s been happening in their lives over the past month.

    I still appreciate order, and I know how to thrive in chaos—that skill kept us fed when there was no margin for error. But there is something quietly magical about a pantry full of staples, about knowing I won’t have to pull something together out of nothing this time. What matters is what’s on the table, and who shows up to eat. Absence taught me what neglect looks like. Presence taught me what care feels like. The difference is no longer subtle, and I don’t unlearn things like that.

  • New Patterns

    I recognize patterns. Not always the obvious ones, but the subtle, repeated behaviors, actions, and coincidences that pile up over time. I’ve been accused of “ruining a movie” by predicting the twist long before the big reveal, but that’s exactly how I see patterns in life.

    And while it’s an annoyance for some, for me, it’s survival. It’s how I’ve learned to notice when something is genuine versus performative, when it’s consistent versus conditional.

    I wrote in a “long ass update on life” that I’ve learned what it feels like to be appreciated and truly seen—and that it’s really uncomfortable sometimes.

    And it makes sense, because I’m not used to it. Consistency. Unconditional care. Attention without expectation. I’m used to the pattern going the other way.

    The difference becomes obvious in the little things. (It’s always the little things, isn’t it?) Date nights happen without me having to remind anyone. Gifts aren’t just “stuff”—they’re thoughtful, reflecting things I actually need or enjoy. There’s even a stocking (a stocking!)—and that feels extraordinary after years without anything like it.

    School pickups, conversations with my kids, thoughtful proactive actions; these aren’t obligations or checkboxes. They’re intentional. Attention is given where it’s needed. Space is respected where it’s wanted. Frustration is named and managed, not dumped out for everyone else to manage. Emotions are acknowledged. Details are noticed. Effort is consistent, not performative.

    This is what it looks like when someone has learned the difference between morals and skills.

    And it’s so important to understand the difference.

    Morals are easy. They live in words, in ideas, in what we say we believe. Anyone can claim them. Skills are the harder part. Skills are what we actually do when it’s uncomfortable. Skills are action. They’re measurable. They’re real. You can’t fake them, not for long.

    It’s a skill to tolerate shame without collapsing, to accept responsibility without rewriting reality, to prioritize others over your own self-image. And when those skills are present, it shows up everywhere—in the little gestures, the attention that’s given without being asked for, the way a home feels safe and a child feels seen.

    It’s unfamiliar, yes. But it’s real. And it’s the pattern I want to keep noticing.

  • The biggest lie I told myself

    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.

  • A long ass update on life

    As I start this, I’m sitting at work, listening to a forty-minute conversation between my ex-husband and myself from before we officially separated and divorced. The first two minutes are nearly silent. That was normal for us, to begin a conversation with the need to speak, but neither of us wanting to really start it. Whatever can we opened was going to be an effort in closing back up. The last 38 minutes is a back and forth, with me pleading for palpable effort, him countering with how he wanted to but couldn’t, or how he was putting in the effort but I just didn’t see it, or my now favorite trigger, the subtle suggestion that I just wasn’t worth it.

    Admittedly, it probably isn’t the healthiest thing for me to listen to these recordings, especially years later. There are times when I listen and it absolutely destroys me. I remember that woman, I remember the weight of her in my chest, the desperation to just be heard in her voice. The pleading for equality. The attempts to explain the disparities and the quiet, whimpering defeat at the end of the “conversation” where I walked away feeling guilty or ashamed more often than not.

    Guilty or ashamed for even approaching the subject to begin with. Didn’t I know what he was going through? Why couldn’t I see the effort he claimed he was putting in? Compared to how I’d grown up, compared to the rest of the world, compared to other relationships, didn’t I know how good I had it? He didn’t beat me. He didn’t openly berate me. We had a roof, clothes, food, vehicles.

    But sometimes, when I listen to these recordings, they remind me of just how far I’ve come.

    And how far I’ve yet to go.

    Listening to them is like watching an old version of myself through thick glass — close enough to hear her breath catch, but far enough removed to finally see the miasma she was choking on.

    The silence at the beginning, the pleading in her voice, the guilt she swallowed like a morning vitamin… none of it surprises me anymore. But it does something else. It reminds me how much I tolerated simply because I didn’t know I deserved better.

    Sometimes, when I hear her — the self-blame, the way she bends herself in half trying to hold a crumbling marriage together — it breaks my heart. Other times, it lights a fire in me, because I can see so clearly now what she couldn’t back then.

    That’s the strangest part about healing:
    you don’t realize how far you’ve gone until you look back at the version of you that was left behind.

    The woman in that recording?
    She was tired.
    She was conditioned.
    She was surviving.

    And she’s not the woman I am anymore.

    Because somewhere between leaving that marriage and everything that followed — the health scares, the financial strain, the heartbreaks, the rebuilding — I became someone entirely different.

    The woman in the recording, the me before, was living in constant negotiation. Not only with someone who made her believe love had to be earned, but with herself.

    I negotiated and apologized for having needs. I convinced myself that if I held on just a bit longer, tried just a bit harder, stayed just a bit quieter, focused just a bit more on making his life easier… then maybe it would all be worth it. But the truth was, there was never going to be an “end.” There was always going to be something else he needed that outweighed what I did.

    I settled for “less harmful” instead of healthy.
    I graded my marriage on a curve built from childhood, trauma, and loneliness.


    I normalized my pain by justifying it.

    Other people had it worse. Other relationships were harder. I’d survived more as a child. I’d already endured abuse, cold winters, government cheese, and the taunting that came with clothes that didn’t fit or smell right. My children had more than I ever did at their ages — so who was I to complain?

    When I first started this blog, the idea was honesty. Brutal honesty.

    But I wasn’t being completely honest. Not with myself.
    I was still making myself small. Sure, I had emerged a bit, taken up a bit more space, but I was still hunched over, still placating, still trying to soothe a beast with my back pressed to a wall. I was still acting as an emotional container for someone else and placing myself further down the line. Not last anymore — but definitely not first.

    One of my earliest posts mentioned how I didn’t hate my ex-husband, how I took accountability for the downfall of our marriage, how I wanted to co-parent peacefully and wish him well because that benefitted our kids.

    But the truth — the real, uncomfortable truth — is that I was still unsure of my worth. I was still measuring myself by his responses. Still looking to him for cues on whether I was doing “enough.” Still using his emotional temperature as a barometer for my value. I wasn’t fully healed; I wasn’t even fully honest. I was performing stability because I thought it was the only way to keep the peace.

    And life has a funny way of testing the lies we tell ourselves.

    Because this past year didn’t give me the luxury of staying small. It pulled me forward whether I was ready or not. It pushed me into situations and ER visits I never expected. It dragged me through financial strain that made me question every decision I’d made. It led me into relationships that taught me in weeks what my marriage didn’t teach me in years. It stripped away the versions of myself built on survival and forced me to confront the one built on truth — actual truth — my truth.

    This last year — messy, painful, expensive, revealing — became the kind of clarity I never asked for but desperately needed.

    So here’s the part where I finally start to catch you up.
    Not the filtered version.
    Not the polite one.
    The real one.

    The one where I stop glossing things over, stop minimizing the abuse, stop joking about the trauma just to make it easier to swallow.

    Unless it’s funny. Then it’s fair game.

    This past year has been a rickety roller coaster. Since my last blog post, I’ve had my gallbladder removed unexpectedly. I’ve ended relationships and gained new ones. I’ve made enemies. I’ve spoken my mind when silence would’ve served me better, and I’ve stayed silent when my voice would’ve mattered. I’ve been between homes, hit rock bottom financially, and scraped by on the skin of my big toe. I’ve been shown the worst of the people I once trusted and have been the recipient of unsolicited kindness from absolute strangers. I’ve been a bitch to those who didn’t deserve it and kind to people who deserved a backhand. I’ve questioned my sexuality, my sanity, and my ability to even survive.

    But I’ve also learned what being appreciated feels like.
    What being seen feels like.
    And I’ve learned that sometimes, it’s really uncomfortable.

    I’ve tried to self-sabotage and run from the best relationship I’ve ever been in because I was scared. I’ve met the greatest love of my life and experienced a level of patience and rationality I didn’t even know existed — a kind of steadiness I didn’t realize was possible.

    And as I finish this, two days later and sitting in the home I’m getting ready to share with my loves, that’s where I’ll leave this for now — right on the edge of a difference I’m still learning to trust, a softness I’m still learning to believe I deserve, and a chapter I’m still learning how to write.

  • Reasoning continued.

    When I said I hadn’t posted anything online in a while, that wasn’t entirely true. A couple of years ago, I started posting on a Tumblr account—somewhat anonymously. I didn’t attach my name to anything, and only a handful of people had the link. Mostly, I transcribed entries from my paper journals. I did this to create a record of what my children and I were going through as my then-husband spiraled from untreated PTSD and undiagnosed Bipolar II disorder.

    Despite the chaos of that time frame, I can’t label my ex-husband as a terrible person. At the end of the day, I still trust him with our children. I know that if I were in absolute dire straits, he would help as much as he could. He had a mental health crisis and spiraled. The person he was during that time isn’t truly who he is at his core. And I can’t paint a full picture of our relationship’s demise without acknowledging my own role in it. But that’s a story for another post, or two.

    To summarize: Did we have our differences? Absolutely. Were there underlying issues beyond our control? Again, absolutely. We officially separated at the end of 2022, but honestly, I think we both knew it was over before that.

    Which brings me to the real reason I started writing this post: brutal honesty. Not just about events but also about my part in them—the chaos I contributed to, the miscommunication, and the misconceptions I carried from my younger years.

    Whew, that’s a mouthful. But let me try to explain, maybe poorly.

    A lot of my mental health progress is due to traditional methods: medication, therapy, diagnoses, and even a “grippy-sock vacation.” But more than anything, I credit my education. I went back to school, earned my Bachelor of Science in Social Sciences, and almost completed an Associate’s in Funeral Services. I officially graduated at 40—which is kind of bullshit because I finished my last courses before my birthday, but whatever. And while I’m still bitter about the credit hours that didn’t transfer from Funeral Services to Social Sciences, I’m grateful for the journey it took to get here. It just took forever.

    And while my degree may not impress many people, I need you to understand: I’m a high school dropout. I got my GED the same day my oldest daughter was born.

    So here I am, back at the keyboard, no longer burying my thoughts in trash bins. The journey that brought me here has been long, messy, and filled with more detours than I care to admit. But it’s my journey, and I’m owning every step of it—the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.

    Growth and understanding aren’t linear, nor are they a destination. Instead, it’s a continuous process of learning, unlearning, relearning, and then piecing it all together, slowly and with the preparedness of knowing that you may have to rip it all apart again to make it fit better later on. It’s a hard process and no one should have to go it alone or feel like they’re alone while they’re doing it. So, here I am, sharing my take on the process with anyone who wants to see it.

    I’m no longer just surviving. I’m beginning to thrive. And while that might sound cliché, it’s my truth. Writing is no longer something I fear; it’s something I embrace, even when it forces me to confront the parts of myself I’d rather forget.

    This blog is a dialogue with my former self, a testament to the growth that comes from chaos and the clarity that follows confusion. I don’t know where this path will lead, but for the first time in a long time, I’m excited to find out.

  • The First Post: A Reasoning

    The Artist Formerly Known as Cora Kane

    It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything online. For the most part, I’ve kept my thoughts confined to paper and pen, where they’re easier to destroy—safer than a blog post or some cringey article from a decade ago. Whenever I reached the point where I had to write, where not writing felt like drowning in my own thoughts, I would rip the pages from their binding, hide them beneath piles of wet kitchen trash, or burn them. If it didn’t exist, I couldn’t be accused of saying it—or worse, thinking it. One less battle to fight.

    I’ve come to realize that I did this out of fear. Fear that my words, my truth, might offend someone enough to provoke retribution. And honestly, I was just tired. Tired of fighting battles that no longer felt worth it. So, I retreated. I abandoned the battlefield, so to speak. I stopped writing almost entirely. No more poems, no more short stories, no more song lyrics. No more anonymous posts on random forums or cringe-worthy articles about being a “supportive military spouse.”

    If you knew me back then, you’d know that all I ever wanted was to be a writer, especially in the thriller and horror genres. I grew up devouring Koontz, King, and Rice, hidden under old blankets or tucked away in nooks where no one could find me. During my marriage, I wrote from the perspective of a supportive military spouse, offering advice and opinions I had no business giving. My marriage—and my mental health—were in shambles.

    A decade has passed since my last published article and my now-defunct debut novel. It’s time to re-enter the arena. I’m no longer afraid of retribution or revenge; my name has been dragged through the mud long enough that I’ve grown roots. I’m no longer a supportive military spouse. In fact, I’m no longer a spouse at all. My unwavering support for all things military has eroded into something closer to contempt. I no longer carry the same blind optimism for love and country and, at times, I find myself bitter about the state of things.

    But from bitter beginnings come better endings—or at least some very interesting things to talk about. To discuss. To write about. Including my own past behaviors and beliefs. Even if no one else reads this, it’s a dialogue with my former self, an examination of how my thoughts, values, beliefs, and overall mental health have changed—and been challenged—over the last decade.