Kate Didd

Ah yes. “The phone goes both ways.”

The emotional equivalent of saying “thoughts and prayers” while doing absolutely nothing.

People love that line. It lets them outsource responsibility while sounding enlightened. Because apparently decades of silence can be neutralized with one casual reminder that phones… exist.

What they forget to mention is that the phone only “goes both ways” if both people ever bothered to pick it up.

Hard to return a call that never came. Hard to reply when you’ve been left on read since before read receipts were invented.

And yes, decades. Not years.

Decades.

I don’t rage about it anymore. I’ve outgrown rage. But every once in a while the scope of it hits me and I have to laugh, because if I don’t laugh, I’ll start naming crimes.

I wasn’t just “raised rough.”

I wasn’t “given resilience.”

I was abused.

My dad was physical.

My mom was avoidant.

Both lived in denial and called it personality. They demanded I accept them exactly as they were while insisting I become someone easier to live with. Which is fascinating logic, if you enjoy nonsense.

When I finally spoke up, I was told I was the problem. Not the behavior. Not the violence. Me. Because I stood up and said, “No actually, this happened.” And I didn’t just say it, I brought receipts.

Photos. Documentation. Evidence collected before smartphones, before social media, before trauma became aesthetic. I was gathering proof back when silence was the family brand.

And here’s the pattern I’ve noticed since telling the truth:

Only the guilty get angry.

Everyone else just listens.

That includes the ex-mistress who called me unstable while auditioning for the role of “woman with no boundaries.” She said I was crazy. Which, fair. I was being gaslit by a husband who learned emotional neglect straight from my father.

That’s the thing about unhealed people: they don’t grow up. They just get older and louder. Toddler emotions. Adult money. Temper tantrums with credit limits.

I left.

I chose peace.

And I told the world I was a gold digger because apparently confidence terrifies people who think self-worth should be negotiable.

Here’s the part they don’t like:

I don’t bring something to the table.

I am the table.

The house around it.

The utilities.

The deed.

And when you’re everything, people try to take pieces. I didn’t need that life. I needed softness. Quiet mornings. Safety.

Which is how I ended up back with my husband a plot twist I didn’t write but somehow earned.

He changed. Not with speeches. With action. Flowers that don’t die unnoticed. Coffee made without asking. Presence. Accountability. The radical act of growing up.

Turns out when you stop accepting scraps, the menu changes.

I learned something important along the way:

People who accuse you of being “too much” are usually upset you stopped being less.

And now?

I’m calm.

I’m grounded.

I’m powerful in the least dramatic way possible.

The phone still goes both ways.

But my boundaries don’t.

And that’s the punchline.