sweetlikeandy - Tumblr blog

[sweetlikeandy]

i commonly wonder if you would love me if you saw me now

[sweetlikeandy]

[sweetlikeandy]

i find it fitting that in our years of marriage we haven’t plugged in our bedside lamps once although we sleep next to one another every night

[sweetlikeandy]

avoidance.

it is a way of life.

a terrible way of life.

it is a familiar way of life.

[sweetlikeandy]

[sweetlikeandy]

i should be writing on here more. i don’t fully understand my own intentions with this blog. i understand that i had a blog a long time ago. i wrote about my day on there and told life stories. i also sometimes wrote poetry. i guess i could do all of that in here too.

what’s wild is that this all started as a way to become the girl i use to be. i wanted to go back. i was delusional and thought i was in love. it is funny because i was so wrong. my brain wasn’t trying to tell me i was still in love with my ex, it was trying to show me all the ways he groomed me. i think that the fact i looked back in what i thought was love goes to show the true levels of brain washing that happened. i am so grateful for my therapist janet helping me to understand. i never would’ve thought of it that way. my body was ready to tell me and i wasn’t ready to listen. she even upped the number of appointments we had to help me process everything that was finally clicking into place in my head. i didn’t need to become my younger self to stop the nightmares, i had to love and understand my younger self. the hidden trauma. the abuse disguised as love. i had to drag myself through it. and now here i am.

i might have gained weight, but i understand myself and i love myself too much to starve myself. i will learn to take better care of myself. i’ll forgive myself for all of my mistakes and i will comfort myself when looking back at my past. i will still use this blog and write my thoughts; it just might be in a different way than i originally had imagined

[sweetlikeandy]

i am so emotional. i have missed some meds. i probably should have taken my meds. i have been so insecure about my appearance. i know that i need to stop obsessing over my image. i think i have gained weight in my face and it is driving me insane. i need to calm down

[sweetlikeandy]

i have been trying to be more calm. it works sometimes, but other times it shows. i have been happy making friends at work, but i also have stressed so much about it. every time i gain a friend it feels like i am just gaining another person to lose. it feels like just more people to cling to and beg not to leave. it is exhausting while still being fun. i would say i miss the days where i wasn’t like this, but i have always been like this. i am trying to work on it. i am trying not to be so easily attached to people, but it is definitely difficult. i am happy i have gained friends. i am just trying to be more normal about it

[sweetlikeandy]

[sweetlikeandy]

what do you do when you don’t know what to do anymore?

[sweetlikeandy]

“If it’s still in your mind, it is still in your heart.”

— Paulo Coelho

[sweetlikeandy]

i visited janet (my therapist) the other day, and i opened up a little more about my history with men. it was nice to hear her opinion especially when i haven’t been completely sure of my own opinion. you see, i have always had a baby face. even when i was 23 one of my coworkers thought i was 16. after high school i developed a preference for men that were older than me. by the time i was 18 i had decided i didn’t want to date anyone under 23. when i was younger i assumed this was why i frequently saw older men. i dated two men who were older and casually talked to more men who were older. i considered the first two mentioned to be like a boyfriend, even though we didn’t ever officially receive that title. both had moments that i now look back on and question.

miguel was a coworker of mine who was older than me. we saw each other in secret. at the time i didn’t want to tell our coworkers because i knew two of my friends found him attractive, and i was worried they’d be mad at me. i assumed he didn’t want to tell because his sisters also worked with us. in all actuality he probably had slightly more of a reason to hide me. you see, when i finally did tell my two female coworkers that i was friends with (they were older than me) they apologized to me. i was so confused. the way they looked at me with judgement and shame was very surprising for me. i thought they’d be excited and talk to me about it like girls usually do. instead they looked at me in a very different way. i thought back then that they were just jealous of me. i knew they had found miguel handsome and so i figured they were jealous that he had chosen me. i was angry. i realize now that they were not jealous. they pitied me. they knew i was being used. they knew he was taking advantage of my ignorance. i thought he had feelings for me. i didn’t understand his motivations or why he actually was interested in me. i even visited one of my friends the other day at my old job and miguel was there. i was enjoying speaking to my friend and my old coworkers. when i left my friend told me that miguel was talking to one of the newer workers there about my body. he was excitedly speaking to someone about my body and it was in a complimentary way, but still. the fact that i truly thought this man loved me at some point is delusional. someone who loves you would never be comfortable speaking sexually about your body with complete strangers.

franc was a man i met on tinder. he had already graduated from college. he was also older than me. i thought he was so handsome. my mom knew about him and i don’t think she knew what to do. she wasn’t sure about if he had trustworthy motives. she knew if she tried to keep me away from him it would only make me want him more. i would go to my job and leave my phone there while frank picked me up and took me to his house. i left my phone because my parents constantly tracked my location. when frank dropped me back off at work i would get changed into my work uniform and do some work off the clock to make my dad think i had worked the whole time when he came to pick me up. i was madly in love with franc. i truly thought he was it for me. there are a few issues with this- franc snuck me around his house where he was staying with his parents while he was trying to get a job in his career field. i assumed it was because we were casual, but as time went on it seemed a little different. he never called me his girlfriend but he knew i was exclusive to him. even though, unknowingly to me at the time, he was seeing girls on occasion. he didn’t see many girls while he was with me, but he did see a couple. while i was quickly falling for this guy he always would make me out to be so innocent. it was like a big deal to him. he loved talking about how innocent i was and how cute i was. at the time i figured it was just his way of complimenting me. looking back, i realize he was with me because i looked younger than i was and the innocence just played into his fantasies. he loved being with someone who looked underage and preferred it because at least he wasn’t breaking laws by being with me. it is like he got his cake and ate it too. the reason franc and i separated was because he got a job teaching english in a country overseas. he told me that he was in love with me and he was sorry and that he knew he never called me his girlfriend, but he needed me to know he looked at me as his. when he first arrived overseas he would get wasted and call me and tell me he wanted me to come live with him. the crazy thing is i truly would have. he told me he wished i would’ve gotten pregnant before he left so i would have to travel with him. i though that was so romantic at the time. entrapment, anyone? the flags are always so clear in hindsight. he constantly would ask me if he was as bad as my exes. and it was very important to him that he was a better person than them. guilty conscience, anyone? after being over there for a while he began to act weird. one day he admitted to me that he was dating one of his students. that was already questionable since he was an authority figure to her. to make matters worse, she was sixteen. she was more than ten years his junior. i told him this was wrong. i told him he was messed up. he told me the age of consent over there was sixteen. i told him just because something is legal doesn’t make it morally okay. we still talked on and off, but it never recovered after that. i don’t know what ever happened to the girl. i hope she is ok.

the reason i bring all of this up is because recently i began having very upsetting dreams about franc. i tried reaching out to him but he didn’t have the same number. the guy is like a ghost. ever since before i met him he would constantly delete his socials and change his number. he told me this was all to avoid some crazy girl who helped him in college. he was worried he would lose his degree so he always tried to lose her. looking back, i wonder if that’s truly what happened to her. i wonder if there wasn’t a different reason. maybe she was a victim. after not being able to contact frank i contacted janet, my therapist. she saw me in office and i cried my eyes out. at first she thought i was just still in love with him, but as i told my story she saw something i hadn’t seen. i had been groomed. i never considered it grooming. i was completely unaware that you could be groomed as an adult. being 18/19 i was legally an adult so i figured everything was inherently okay. i didn’t realize he liked me because i looked sixteen. i didn’t put the pieces together to see that him calling me innocent was a flag. when i told janet about the sixteen year old student she asked if franc was a pedophile. she didn’t ask this as a joke. she was completely serious. i was in shock. that word. i had never associated him with that word. that was what made her realize he was using and grooming me. i was so lost. i was speechless. it was so difficult to resolve the person i thought i loved with the person he was truly.

now that i am almost the same age as these men i look back and see what happened clearly. i was naive. i was lost. i thought i was the one in control. i couldn’t have been more wrong. i am grateful i am aware now. it hurts my soul to have to understand that the love i was feeling for these men was never the same as the lust they had for me, but i am glad that i have ms. janet to help me see how things were in reality. i am happy to no longer be fooled by my delusions

[sweetlikeandy]

-old friend, new memory-

i don’t have many friends that i have known since middle school. to be more specific- i have three. i got to see one of them today and it was so nice. today i got to see rose and we went to the city together. i hadn’t seen her in person in a really long time. we met at one of the cute diners and it was so good. i am very boring so i ordered chicken tenders, fries, and dr. pepper. i feel like i eat that same meal all the time whenever i go to restaurants that serve food like that. after lunch we went to the local bookstore where i bought a horror manga from an author i had been wanting to check out. i haven’t read a ton of manga in the past but i had been wanting to read more manga. after the bookstore we went to the vinyl store. i bought more records than i would’ve expected. i bought snow angel by renee rapp, mac miller’s npr tiny desk concert, and i bought periphery’s icarus album. after seeing rose i had to go to work. work was pretty good today. i found out that the upstairs prep room was flooded because they didn’t realize they left the hot water running. it was a ton of water. they got most of it up even if it did take a while. i am trying to get rose a job at my job because she’s been looking for a job. i have a podcast that i don’t update frequently enough and i would like to try to update it more often this year. my next episode i think i am going to do a year in review for all the books i read last year. i might do it tomorrow since tomorrow is my next day off

[sweetlikeandy]

Rocío Romero García

[sweetlikeandy]

a personification of everyone i ever believed i would marry when i was younger

Honeymoon suite in abandoned Mount Airy Lodge in Poconos, PA

[sweetlikeandy]

[sweetlikeandy]

looking back at 2023

2023 was a year that was filled with memories. adam went on his first deployment, i began working with a coach on my binge eating, i rode on my first plane, i transferred to a new store location (temporarily), i started re-evaluating my career path, i made a lot of new friends, i started trying to find myself, i started a blog (hello), i read 103 books, i started to use makeup casually again, my mom broke her hip, i sprained my ankle, and a ton of other things happened.

for 2024 i would love to find myself, travel more, keep reading, blog more, take my meds regularly, continue to heal my relationship with food, start exercising again, start cooking more, watch more movies, and make more memories.

it is honestly wild that it is almost 2024. every so often i realize how much time has flown by ever since 2019 and begin to panic. i am 26 and still don’t fully know what i want to do as a career, and i am ok with that.

i hope you had a great 2023 and i hope you have an amazing 2024