am i effected?

Those people who are closest to me in life have a unique opportunity to have a great impact through their words. So much of the time when I am explaining to friends and family the new people I am meeting and the new things I am experiencing, there is vast opportunity for reactions to play a role.

And especially when I have met new people...new men in particular, words have power. And I pay attention to the reactions of those people I cherish. Someone had asked me yesterday if the comments made by others on people I know and am close with have an impact on how I proceed forward.

In these situations, I feel as though it is very critical to examine the source of the comment. If I feel as though the person speaking is speaking words with malicious intent, I will acknowledge that. If I truly to see it as something "with my best interest" at heart, then I will acknowledge that. Therefore, I feel as though examining the source is critical.

It is difficult though to hear words spoken of someone that you are close to that aren't necessarily in a positive light, and not have your mind preoccupied by that planted seed. For me sometimes it will spin me into a cycle of examining my relationships and seeing if those qualities are actually there, instead of making the decisions and conclusions for myself.

This blog is short but important: I feel as though if we allow ourselves to be effected negatively by words of impression and expectation of other people, then we aren't confident in who we are inside. I realize that the line isn't so black and white, but in a sense it can be. We can allow or not allow those words to impact how we conduct our own relationships.

to the solstice

There are few people in this world who are able to be who they are in all essence: pride for personal accomplishment, recognition of weakness, humbleness with the world, victim of love's storm, and a relentless heart.

Adam Simon is this. A man who I met three weeks before his move from Boulder to New Haven has allowed me to become opened to my truest internal working. He and I have formed a bond that seems almost indescribable in words. I will try my hardest to articulate what he means to me, but sometimes silence says more.

Here I am. At a frisbee tournament, not entirely sure of the impact that meeting Adam would have on me. Through superficial conversation and various social gatherings, Adam's demeanor and individuality stood out. In my first impression he came to me with genuine conversation, eager to understand me and my life. Through our couple of weeks together, the realization of this gem of a man was in front of me.

Music is where we draw a lot of commonality. He puts an incredible amount of energy into his music and appreciates every moment of it. In our last few days in Boulder together, we recorded two songs together. Those two songs I draw on nearly daily for they remind me of synchronicity between two people. There his voice is whenever I need it. And it brings me comfort like little else does.

A beautifully eloquent man in his writings of letters and songs, Adam expresses want and hurt and love through his words. A fellow lover of solstices, he and I share more than just a longing for more sunlight in the day.

This man listens. At 3am when I call crying because I have had my heart divided, he is there for me. No questions asked. No thought in my mind that I am inconveniencing him. He has a power in my life that he doesn't even realize.

He is my sunrise. In the morning, there are people that I think of. People who have expanded me, enlightened me, humored me, taught me, and loved me. Adam is high on this list. He is someone who I will grow old with. I appreciate him every morning when I see the beautiful sun paint its light pink hue on the flatirons in Boulder. He is there with me as I am blinded by the sun glistening in the snow. He is my coming home.

He knows my heart and he understands my love of the day. He knows who he is, and teaches me every day to know myself more. For you Adam, I am grateful. Thank you for your undeniable friendship. You are a light in my life and I love you dearly. Keep your head toward the sun and follow it through the day. As the months pass, the sunlight will shine longer. And...always choose a room facing east.

a time to reflect

So here as promised is my blog a little while later after the heightened state of emotion has returned to baseline. I have thought so much about my experience over the last week and how it is impacting and changing me.

I realize after re-reading my last couple of blogs that I was experiencing such immense shame and doubt over my behavior that my words didn't express much other than that. I apologize for it, because there were other emotions circling in my mind. The morning after I wrote, my mother and I went to a friend's house for breakfast. It was difficult for me participating in all of these functions for the time that my mother was in Boulder because I felt as though our friendship had turned inside out. I felt like I was walking on egg shells but didn't want to be. I felt like I needed to judge myself and then ashamed that I would. I felt like I couldn't be carefree with her and joke around because I was behaving like a toddler. I didn't know who I was, and therefore was having such a difficult time relating to the people around me.

But as we arrived at this breakfast, I was speaking to the hostess as my mother was outside, and she was listening closely to my story and what I had to say. She told me something important initially and that was (not exact quote) "I hear your shame and doubt, and I see that you are going over in your mind how unfathomable it is to be back at square one. But I want you to replace those two emotions with gratefulness. Now is the moment to be truly thankful that you are so young and learning this lesson."

And how right she is. For the first time in my life, I found myself not marinating in the negative of how I was feeling because of my actions. I was finding it all but impossible to separate my behavior from who I was as a person. And all I could see in my view was how horribly I had acted, and how that made me feel. When instead, I feel as though it came at a critical time to examine the behavior, separate it from who Greer Van Dyck is at the core, and be thankful that from that point on, I would bloom into a new kind of flower.

So here I am right now. Able to reflect on those many emotions I was experiencing all at once during the week, speak again to my mother, come to a beautiful place with her, and really appreciate where I am now versus seven days ago. It is truly remarkable how within one shell I can change into so many things. I feel like my transformation and evolution is occurring daily. I said it in my first blog, every day is a lesson. But through that, it is critical to be one thing: grateful.

the new replacement

I have to revise this post because I feel I have done myself a disservice by choosing to share and detail this oh so recent circumstance. My intense emotional state tainted this blog, but instead of deleting it and starting over, I feel as though it is important to communicate how I was feeling at a heightened state. However, I am eager to tell you that in a few days, I will write again on this experience...and then I will feel like I will truly be able to provide a genuine and calmer expression.
Out with the old, in with the revised, and at the moment treading water. I find myself at an interesting crossroads (shocker I know, it seems like I've come to about 2000000 crossroads in the last fifteen minutes). This one feels interestingly different though in the sense that there is familiarity. I left my floral landmark at this one crossroads two years ago, and I am upon it now and recognizing those flowers that I had placed so carefully on the bifurcation.

It is an odd reality feeling that I are now back where I had been once, with the intention of never being back. It doesn't feel like I am taking one step forward and two steps back, because even though it is the same demon, it has a different face. And for that, I am easy on myself.

Lying, cheating, manipulating, plotting, scaming...they all reside under a big veil of fear. To me it is almost a fear of not being okay in my own skin. It is a clear avoidance of being truly who I am, because there is a shell of disquietude. I broke through my shell of anxiety around cheating because that is the face my fear chose.

This time around, it seeped into my monetary livelihood. After being detached financially from my father (well for the most part), I took my relationship with money to a damaging extreme. I was so inclined to SAVE SAVE SAVE just because of being witness to poor behavior of excessive spending. I saw what debt did to people I loved. And in an attempt to never let that happen to me, I drove myself to the far other end of the continuum.

I was so far at the other end, that I would do ANYTHING (manipulate my loving family, lie to my mother's face whom I cherish to my last breath) to "keep a handle on my own war chest." I justified my behavior and took it as a survival mechanism, and that "if I was saving in the end, then it was good."

Well here I am now, coming to this oh so familiar crossroads and thinking...I am ashamed. I am guilty. I am a liar. So many emotions that I had marinated in during nursing school with my cheating loomed above me like a threatening storm. And instead of spending my precious time here on earth to relive that cycle, I am turning my shame and guilt into gratefulness. I am utterly grateful that I am 23 and learning this lesson for good. I am slowly beginning my journey to becoming genuinely selfless, but in order to be that...I had to have learned this lesson. I want to give what I have and more without concern. So I am embarking now, choosing again the high road at this oh so familiar turning point.

an hour of shame

AT this one moment in time, I feel like a monster. I don't feel like a human in a way. An issue that I have really made an attempt to patch up in my life has really made its way back into my world and is standing at the forefront of my attention. I thought for two years that I had reached a point in my life where I was not in need any longer of lying to get "where I needed to go." I thought that there would never be another opportunity in my life where I would have to question my actions, feel that same sense of guilt that encompassed my being for so long.

And here I am. I feel like I am standing again at the lowest level of the staircase after having climbed and climbed for so long, only to look around me and see that I had made no progress at all. That I may as well have only just begun. That is how I feel at at least. Now I know in the depth of my heart that I'm not there. I know that what has happened is that I have come to the top of a very important staircase, and I know that upon completion of that flight I came to the footing of another very important flight of steps. And that is where I stand. If I look at my immediate surroundings, of course it appears as though I am at the bottom. It looks like I haven't even begun my journey when in fact I have jumped through the biggest loophole.

This next loophole may not be as big, but it is surrounded by fire. And its ability to burn and sting is much greater, and I feel much more intimidated.

Today I lied to my mother. I used my cunning abilities to avoid paying for my Christmas gifts. I pulled out the same tricks in my bag to avoid a fear. I was deviant and looking behind my shoulder, with anxiety and superstition looming above me. I took her for granted, I took advantage of her generous bounty. I took the good names of my mother and father and used them for my own selfish reasons. And here I stand on the edge of the cliff, looking down on the layers that I continuously shed from my shell.

After a conversation and a complete surrender, I find myself right now having learned such an ultimate lesson. That no matter who we think we are, and no matter how far we think we've come, we are able to trip and fall. We are able to surrender to the forces of the world. We are able to hurt those people in our world who are closest to us. I would give my life for my mother, I would take a bullet for her, and yet I am still able to hurt her in such a profound way. These realities are shocking and above all else intensifying very familiar feelings of shame and guilt.

However, the lesson is learned. And this will never happen again. So while I feel broken and a bit like I must relearn how to fly, I find myself afraid to step outside of my house and live as the newest version of myself. With that fear though I will step, and with those steps I will not hang my head.

to each bag his own

Everyone has their own grocery bag of issues which can manifest as a paper bag without handles, a paper bag with handles, a plastic bag, or the new and ever so trendy re-usable version. They come in many forms and in many displays. There isn't one person who doesn't have them. I feel like the only opportunity one would take in saying they don't exist on an internal level is due to lack of self awareness.

And interestingly enough, I see these sometimes as faults in other people. I think of them negatively and when they are manifested in other people, I turn my nose up at them. And usually what will happen is I will see these things, and really internalize them. I will let them build and at that one moment where I feel the water is about to boil over the top of the pot, I will release it. But this is where I think that the problem arises: when I do feel the need to release it, it is very seldom to that person. It is usually to a confidant, someone else that I can trust with that information. But what am I really saying when I am releasing it?

I am judging it and labeling it. I am really expressing frustration for someone being nothing more than different from me. And the thing is I know I have these discrepencies, or grocery bags of issues too, so where do I find the right to act as though I am above it?

In this last instance, I have seen that I feel an enormous amount of perspective is really critical here. For we cannot judge something in someone else that we have within us as well. It isn't fair to be hypocritical. So here I am right now, having the opportunity to find the best balance for myself in handling my own and others' "bag of individuality."

I see myself here thinking about what is at the heart of human interaction. Each involvement that I have with someone allows me more and more insight into who they are at the core. And with that comes knowledge and wonder and excitement. And I come to the conclusion that: at the end of the day, everybody has their own bag. In my opinion, they are what make someone unique, so instead of judging and labeling them, I will take that negativity and transform it into something more beneficial. For me it isn't a matter of whether or not those elements are going to exist in someone else, for me it is about how I use them in my daily life that will be of benefit. And see these faults more of as treasures, for without them...there would be no adventure in interaction.

my confirmation #

Life it isn't the same as going to the check in gate at the airport, typing in your confirmation number and having that security of knowing that all details related to your flight are going to fall into place. I feel like that one moment when my boarding ticket gets printed, there are no more fears related to me having actually scheduled my trip for a different day, a different time, or a different city.

Relationships, both romantic and friendly are more complex and dynamic like that. It is interesting because romantically speaking, I don't find myself necessarily needing that validation that the other person is there for me. I have felt this sense of calm relating to romance that what will happen will happen, and that my desire to control and understand all facets is a waste of energy. But I think so much of that is due to the fact that I have never truly had my heart broken. I have been side swiped (read two blogs ago), many times...but I don't think those emotions really come close to the feelings of having your heart truly split down the middle. That disbelief that your heart all of a sudden doesn't seem like part of your body.

With friendships though things are different for me now. And they have been different since the beginning of this year. I have realized why as well. I know that because of my experiences, I have understood and lived what it feels like to have friends taken from me in one fell swoop without me having an opportunity to say goodbye or question why. I feel like with my friendships and lives lost, I have been completely victim to the unpredictability of life and its beneficial but also detrimental power.

I have met incredible women and men through school and around my life in Boulder. And every day I feel privileged to be in the company of individuals who enlighten and expand me, make me break down with laughter, make me feel connected, make me ask those unanswerable questions, and make me feel human. And I am scared that one day they will be taken from me too.

But I cannot live this way, my mom used to reverberate this phrase "don't live afraid, just live smart." So here we go: this is one of the brilliant turning point moments where I can take those valuable sprouts of wisdom and incorporate them into my behavior. So I will cherish my friendship but not be paranoid that I will lose them, not be eager for confirmation of their authenticity. I know that I have nothing to be insecure about, and so I don't need a confirmation number here.