Author’s Note — 2026: This piece was written the night before I earned my doctorate, in August of 2020. I hid it for years after my divorce because the story felt too entangled with a life I no longer lived. Revisiting it now, I see it differently. It is not a story about a marriage — it is a story about becoming. I’ve revised it lightly for clarity, but its heart remains unchanged.
The journey began in 2001, when my soon‑to‑be second husband and I started pondering the mysteries of existence together. I had never met someone who could keep up with me, let alone match my intensity or curiosity. Sparks had happened before, but they never lasted. This was the first time someone was willing to imagine possibilities with me — a better life, a different future, something beyond the limits of where we came from.
But the dream itself began much earlier. I was sixteen when I took my first psychology class. It was the first place where emotion and logic were allowed to coexist, where the inner world was treated as something real. I knew then that I wanted to become one of those healers. But by the time I graduated high school with a 2.7 GPA — despite being in advanced classes — the dream felt impossibly far away. Poverty gave me access to college through financial aid, but it didn’t give me the confidence to believe I belonged there.
After failing Psychology 101 twice, I walked away convinced I would never be enough to become a doctor — a Doctor of Psychology. I was living in a makeshift garage apartment attached to a five‑bedroom house with nine roommates (including my older brother’s and their partners). We used to joke that MTV’s Real World should follow us if they wanted to see what “real” actually looked like. Selling plasma to buy groceries, cigarettes, or a movie ticket was normal. Survival was the only currency.
My first husband and I lived like that until he joined the Air Force. Boot camp, a quick wedding, a move to Eielson AFB in Alaska — and suddenly we were pretending to be middle class. Four years later, we returned to Albuquerque with nothing but work histories and exhaustion. A year after that, our son Aiden was born. Three months later, I was working as a caregiver at the retirement home where my mother had worked on and off since I was a toddler. That was where I met Zane — the man I would spend the next twenty years with, raising a family and building a life neither of us had ever imagined.
After Aiden’s birth, I saw the same emotional disconnect between my ex‑husband and our son that I had felt in our marriage. I knew I would either become resentful or numb. I didn’t yet have the relational maturity to end things gracefully, but I knew I couldn’t stay. When the marriage ended, my ex disappeared from our lives. I spent years doubting my instincts, wondering whether I had imagined the distance I felt. I had never felt empowered, never felt like my voice mattered. I kept my thoughts to myself because people misunderstood me, sexualized my words, or found me “too much.” I had few connections that could meet me deeply, let alone stay there.
One of the first songs Zane ever played for me was “Rough Boy” by ZZ Top. For sixteen years he told me I was too good for him — in between moments of brilliance, clarity, genius, and manic rage. Sometimes all at once. No matter what we said or screamed at each other, we couldn’t walk away. It was as if we were spinning ourselves chaotically toward a future we hadn’t yet imagined for our children.
Three years into our relationship, we both enrolled in college full‑time. It was 2003. I’ve been in school every year since. We married in 2004, and I gave birth to Diego via C‑section just before midterms and Spring Break. I took two weeks off and went right back to class.
We studied tirelessly while navigating our children’s needs — Aiden’s autism, Diego’s precocious intelligence and emotional depth. We stayed in school because financial aid kept us afloat better than any job we could get. And to my surprise, I excelled. Straight A’s for two years, except for Psychology 101 — which I finally passed with a B. I still struggled with memorization, but I could think, write, and conceptualize. That skill would become my greatest strength in graduate school.
I kept going because I didn’t know how to stop. I earned my BA, then entered the MS Counseling Psychology program at New Mexico Highlands University. I completed everything except my thesis before transferring to the Doctor of Psychology program at Pacific University in Oregon. I had stopped believing I could be a psychologist back in 1995 — until my neuropsychology professor, Dr. Gerald Russell, told me, “You would be a hell of a psychologist.” When Pacific accepted me with an assistantship, we were determined to get to Oregon, even if it meant homelessness.
And it did. We were homeless for a month — a family of four with an 8‑ and 12‑year‑old — until the second week of classes. Zane described the day we found a home as the day our parachute finally opened. He said for two years we almost hit the ground. In many ways, we did. And yet we survived.
We survived my depressive episodes, his bipolar episodes, Aiden’s struggles, Diego’s intensity, years of poverty, chronic health issues, and constant uncertainty. When I earned my master’s degree through Pacific, we finally felt lighter. Even the worst‑case scenario — becoming a counselor — felt miraculous compared to where we started. Somehow, after one of the hardest years of our lives, we pushed through two more years and a full doctoral internship.
And now, on the eve of graduation, I still don’t know how to describe what I feel. I’ve been trying to find the words all week. Tonight, I started writing, and four hours later the words found me. There isn’t one emotion — only all of them at once. It is undeniable now: I will become a psychologist. After finishing my doctorate, I am one year of clinical work and one exam away from calling myself a Licensed Clinical Psychologist.
The person I was twenty years ago and the person I am today are as different as night and day. And yet, somehow, I am still just me — the same weird, awkward, sensitive little girl I have always been.
Somehow, that thought is soothing.