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.
Reconstructing Cori 