Reconstructing Cori

Tag: military

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.