When the hardest part of leaving wasn’t escaping him—it was learning to trust myself again.
We had been separated for some time. For real this time.
I was at work when he called.
I don’t even remember what he was calling about, just that tone. The one that always meant the conversation wasn’t going anywhere good.
I stopped him early.
“I’m at work. I’m not going to argue with you.”
And I hung up.
He called again. And again. And again.
Far too many times to count.
Eventually, when he realized I wasn’t going to answer, he stopped calling my phone.
And instead, he called my office.
Jo, my admin assistant, picked up.
She already knew pieces of our story. Enough to understand that him calling the office was never a good sign and that this wouldn’t be a friendly conversation.
She didn’t like him. Not even a little.
She thought he was a bad person. Plain and simple.
Jo and I had become close.
When her apartment flooded, I had let her and her children stay in my home while the repairs on her apartment were being completed. During those few weeks that she lived with me, I’d opened up.
At that point in my life, she was probably the closest thing I had to a friend.
I could hear her answer the phone.
After a brief moment, the sound of her footsteps coming toward my office followed.
“He wants to talk to you,” she said, shaking her head.
“He just wants to fight,” I replied.
“You don’t need to take it.”
But I knew what would happen if I didn’t.
He would keep calling.
Or worse, he’d show up.
So I took the call.
The moment I put the phone to my ear, I knew I’d regret it.
I always did.
His laugh said it all.
He wasn’t going to argue.
No, he was past that.
“You ready for this one?” he said, laughing even louder. “I fucked Jo last weekend.”
Click.
A classic office setting with a vintage telephone, computer monitor, and leather chair by a large window overlooking city buildings
The line went dead.
“He wasn’t calling to argue anymore. He was calling to make me question my own reality.”
I stood there, still holding the phone.
Did he really just say that?
Was he telling the truth?
Or was this just another way to get inside my head?
Another way to push me over the edge.
I looked at Jo.
Before I could stop myself, I blurted it out.
“Did you sleep with him?”
The look on her face said it all.
Shock.
Then disappointment.
But not at him.
At me.
For believing, even for half a second, that it could be true.
She didn’t say a word.
She didn’t have to.
Because she knew.
And I knew.
Yet somehow, I still doubted it.
Before leaving my office, she paused.
“You know, you can’t keep doing this to yourself.”
Two steaming coffee mugs sit on a polished conference table in a sunlit office
But given his history… I couldn’t dismiss anything.
That was the problem.
And it had become my problem.
He had trained me to question everything.
Not just him.
But my own perception of people, situations, and even truth itself.
And I didn’t realize then that this was the real damage beginning to take hold.
“He had trained me to question everything. Not just him—but my own perception of people, situations, and even truth itself.”
A woman in a flowing burgundy dress stands at a forest fork, contemplating which misty path to take.
And just like that, the small steps I’d taken to heal were wiped away.
I put my guard back up.
Built the walls a little higher this time.
So no one else could hurt me.
Or so I thought.
I know now that it wasn’t.
Because after that moment, my friendship with Jo changed.
And the only reason it lasted as long as it did was because we worked together.
Otherwise… I would have walked away then and there.
Eventually, I did.
After I changed jobs, I ghosted her.
Just like I had with so many other people before her.
Not because she deserved it.
But because I didn’t trust myself yet.
I didn’t trust anyone.
Not even my own judgment.
And I was ashamed of that.
“That’s what manipulation does. It doesn’t just damage relationships. It rewrites how you see reality.”
Learning to trust myself hasn’t been linear.
I’ve taken steps forward…
And plenty backward.
But this was one of the moments I realized something had to change.
Because the damage wasn’t just what he did.
It was what I started doing to myself.
“The damage wasn’t just what he did. It was what I started doing to myself.”
And that?
That was only the beginning.
A journal and steaming coffee cup set on a wooden windowsill overlooking a lush garden
This is part of The Ex Chronicles — follow the series for more real stories about love, loss, & lies, and the lessons I learned along the way.
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