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Brownies &new beginnings

When I arrived to Virginia Tech in the Fall of 2023, I moved into transfer housing. I arrived two days before my roommate. My dad got me unpacked and settled in. I really wanted to let this be a new start. I was relieved to be away from B and ready to live my life breathing fresh new air.

And the air felt fresher here. Tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Blacksburg is truly picturesque and breathtaking. This was the absolute best place for me to learn to be me again.

Priority number one was setting up my dorm. I got everything unpacked and organized in probably two days. By the time I had finished, my roommate arrived.

Retrospectively, we both hated this initial interaction. Sydney came in with a big hello and gave me a hug. For anyone who knows me, while I truly love physical touch, I am very slow to actually touch new people. So I thought she was going to be too forward and huggy for the duration of us living together. This terrified me. Months later, Sydney would tell me she also hates hugging people and she wasn't even sure why her first instinct was to dive into a hug.

Sydney and I ended up getting along great. I quickly introduced her to Jake, Jacob and Josh. Jake and Josh quickly told me they would be pursuing dating my new roommate. I was mildly annoyed by this.

My dorm set up a group chat which led to a Discord. Sydney and I were kind of shy but decided we came to college and wanted the experience, so we opened our door and said hi to people passing by. Well someone with a funny name on the Discord server posted wanting to share some cosmic brownies. I told them our door was open and I would trade them for a cookie dough Quest bar.

Into our room waltzed this slender, nerdy white guy. J gave me a brownie and sat on my floor. We talked about majors, League of Legends and hexagons for nearly 2 hours. J was the first friend I made outside of my roommate.

Over the next couple weeks, we would see more and more of each other.

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Friends &changes

Two years before I left for Virginia Tech, I had done really well in a C++ class. The professor liked me so much, he asked if I would start back up the STEM Club as its president. They had gone inactive since COVID changed the world. I agreed. It was another thing on my plate, but I was kind of excited and passionate about the work.

Within the STEM Club, we had a robotics team. Over the summer, we would compete in a National Robotics Competitions. During that year, I wrote the entire code by myself and I had a couple members of the club help with the fabrication. But this robot was largely my work.

At the beginning of the summer of the competition, the Engineering Club, who also had a team, had come to me to ask for help. We ended up deciding to combine forces. I had a robot that needed some work, and they had team members excited to help. And through this combined team, I would make 3 of the best friends I have ever had. Let's call them Jake, Jacob, and Josh.

As we continued working together, we got closer. We hung out all the time. And other friends joined, Katelyn and Aileen, some friends I already had made. They fit in perfectly with the guys. As luck would have it, the boys also planned to transfer to Virginia Tech.

We took classes together. We had a biweekly D&D campaign. We had a biweekly trivia nights at a bar. Everything was wonderful and we were all supremely close.

In February, we got a new member to the crew, Jacob's new girlfriend and my new best friend, Mads. I loved her. We bonded over our autism and love of engineering and science.

The boys and I were even looking at off campus housing together. Eventually, Jake and Josh fell out of the deal (The have a weird home life). Jacob still wanted me to move in with him, but his family wanted him in the really expensive predatory housing situation. It just wasn't something I could afford.

I ended up getting accepted into transfer dorm housing. I found a roommate, Sydney, and I was very excited to get the real college experience, even in my relatively old age.

But, things started going downhill at Virginia Tech.

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Introductions &husbands

Hi.

I'm 28. Divorced. Pursuing my undergraduate computer engineering degree. I'm dating a 23 year old. I'm blogging to do some self analysis and healing I guess.

My relationship is an odd one to some. Basically, we met in the college dorms. I'll call him J for anonymity and simplicity. J had a girlfriend back home and I had a husband back home. So I'll just start with the husband background.

My husband, B, was in the Navy. We met online. I spent my meager life's savings to move from the east coast to Hawaii to be with him in 2018. He was leaving Hawaii in 2020, so we decided to marry, ready or not, so that the Navy would also pay for my move back to the east coast. Almost as soon as we got to the east coast, our relationship started falling apart.

COVID made finding a new job kind of difficult, so I decided to make my financial situation worse and return to college. I went to a community college, and I was in a guaranteed transfer program to Virginia Tech. I was doing really well in my courses, I had soon found 2 part time jobs, and I was managing to maintain the house cooking and cleaning, but it was taking a heavy toll on my mental health. As time went on, B was increasingly neglectful and I just found the thought of him touching me disgusting. Our sex life dwindled.

One day, I was late for a class. I had overslept, and I had slept for 12 hours straight. I had in passing told B how depressed and out of sorts I had been feeling. But on this day, I melted down and I was speaking to him very directly. I talked about my fear of failure and how I didn't think I could handle everything anymore. And he informed me that I was a failure and a shitty wife. The argument heated and he ended up shoving me into a door frame.

After that argument, I went to stay with some friends for a couple weeks. When I came back, I stayed in the guest bedroom. But then his mom lost her house and had to move into our guest bedroom and I was forced back into the same bed as B. He seemingly went back to normal without any resolution to that argument. He told me he wasn't sorry and stood by what he said.

Life went on. I was unhappy. B thought everything was fine though I would beg to go to therapy. He said he didn't need to do couples therapy because the only person who need therapy was me. That hurt. He got new orders to Georgia. I submitted my application to Virginia Tech. He asked me to apply to Georgia Tech as well and I said I would.

Be it luck or subconsciously intentional, I accidentally missed the Georgia Tech application deadline. B was pissed about this and even accused me of doing it intentionally. I told him I didn't, though some part of me felt like I really didn't want Georgia Tech so I was happy with the outcome. So I graduated with an Associates in Electrical Engineering and I was accepted to Virginia Tech; although is was guaranteed, I was still really proud of myself.

B left for a 6 month deployment a few months before I moved to Virginia Tech. B's mom moved out 2 months before I left. My dad took my two dogs up to his house and got me moved into my dorm. That's where I would meet some very important people to my life.