Hey man...thanks

Almost everybody meets at least one person who has a profound impact on their life. Most of us meet a few. Some of us are lucky enough...or perhaps, thoughtful enough...to realize it. My family, especially my parents and my little sister Emily, most of my teachers but most especially my high school band director, Corry Petersen, my best friend Shawn, my ex-boyfriend Bob, who to this day knows me as well as any member of my family and remains a close friend. My colleagues Marsha and Denine, and my work buddy Kelly, who's becoming more and more my good friend. A lot of the time, you don't really realize the importance of their influence in your life, and hindsight is almost always 20/20. I have inherited from my parents the (usually) fortunate perspective that everything, no matter how weird, bad, good, extraordinary or seemingly detrimental, every experience is a learning experience. Everything works out okay in the end. And even when it doesn't, you've still gained all the more from actually experiencing it.

I've also, unfortunately, inherited a strange insomnia from my mother. My father sleeps like a brick, and I've never known the man to be less than a few minutes from solid, heavy sleep once his head hits the pillow. I hope, for his sake, that this is still the case, because insomnia sucks. Especially when you get it at least once a month, like me, and you know it so well you don't even try to beat it anymore. My body's reaction to sleeping aids is to fight them, so I refuse to try to take them anymore. When I get this type of insomnia, it's just all th ebetter to sit up writing a blog post or a journal entry with some cheesy movie on cable (it's "Kingpin" right now) in the background than lay in bed for hours on end watching the minutes tick by and trying to devise ways to trick my brain into shutting off. That's really it: my brain just won't close shop for the night, and I spend the next day wondering at the vibrance of my colleagues as I stumble through on an hour or two of sleep and a lot of caffeine.

However, serious insomnia also gives you a lot of time to ponder things. When in a position like this, I tend to let my brain wander and try not to dwell on one thing too much, just in case it should wander to sleep. This night, my brain keeps wandering back to my boyfriend.

You tend to forget yourself sometimes when you have such an idyllic person in your life, and I, having strong tendencies towards this, tend to push away when I feel like I'm getting too close. Especially when I don't feel that my feelings are being reciprocated. I freak out and I shut down and I almost lose one of the most important people in my life.

I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or next week, three months from now or ten years, but I do know that no matter what happens between us, I'm quite grateful to my boyfriend. He really, really has been the defining influence in getting me back on the track to who I want to be, who I used to be when I was younger. All of the roads leading to my silly, playful, athletic, tomboy self have taken serious twists in the last seven or eight years, and somewhere along the way I lost myself...or at least, a lot of it.

When Gregory and I started seeing each other I was hyper-paranoid about this happening again. I didn't really feel like I knew myself very well anymore, but I knew I wasn't too happy with the person I was at the time and didn't want to get serious with anyone because I always tended to "lose myself" when that happened. Gregory was, much to his credit, extremely patient with me, and as things progressed, I started to see that I really didn't want to be without him. I really liked this one, mostly because he brought out everything in me that I always really liked. I have a better attitude, a better sense of humor, a lighter outlook, a greater sense of self-worth and a healthier approach towards life. I quit smoking, and while everyone I know has recognized this as no small feat, Gregory was there every day in the beginning and, though I don't crave anymore and never ever want to cigarette between my lips again, has been there throughout. Aside from being the biggest catalyst, he's also been my biggest supporter, at least insofar as physically being there for me day in and day out. A couple of weeks in I came home for my lunch break from work to find a card waiting for me on my desk. Its contents detailed his being proud of me, despite the apparent "fact" that I am going to beat him at the Bolder Boulder (not likely).

As it turned out, this is the one relationship where I didn't lose myself, but rather kind of stumbled across myself again. I often wonder at what I could have possibly done to deserve such a great guy, and relish the thought of having been canonized or martyred in a past life and this is some exixtentialist make-up for that.

Then I think about the nature of things between us, and just Gregory's character in general. Between attracting new clients to his company (and maintaining systems for the current ones), volunteering as "shark bait" at Ocean Journey, the Denver aquarium where he works twice a month putting his Dive Master certification to good work by jumping in a huge pool with a bunch of reef fish and sharks (yes, sharks) to feed the fish (and sharks), clean the aquarium, and entertain visitors, working towards his pilot's license, training for Ironman in Perth in November and maintaining his status so he can stay in the country and keep working (ah, the joys of immigration...after hearing about what legal immigrants have to put up with, I can't imagine why anyone would want to get into this country). Yet this guy constantly sports a huge grin that lights up his eyes, which sparkle even when he's being quite serious, and has one of the most positive outlooks of anyone I've ever known. He's attractive, fit, healthy, trim, and very handsome, but doesn't come off as if he knows that at all...there's much more of an "Aw, shucks..." presence to Gregory than anything else. He's unassuming, polite, sweet, incredibly friendly and extremely outgoing. He'll talk to anyone and no matter who they are, he makes them feel more valuable thereafter. Chatting with him is great, and hearing him speaking to his parents or his best friend in French is even better, though I don't understand fully one percent of what he's saying. It's the passion in his voice, the excitement you can hear no matter what the language. It's how alive he is.

It's how I feel too, in the last few months. Not to say I wouldn't have gotten there without him, but Gregory's provided a strong and stable compass that was also fun to be around and made me laugh in addition to pointing me in the right direction...back towards the person I used to be, the person I love to be. Back towards me.

When you pedestallize someone, anything they do can devalue their status in your eyes and therefore, hurt the relationship. When you practice a healthy admiration for your partner, your friend, your lover, you realize the difference really quickly. For me, it's that when I look at my boyfriend, or think of him, or talk about him, I always smile. The difference between pedestallizing and admiration is clear because I can see the way he looks at me too. His gaze mirrors mine. "What...?" One of us will ask. The other one responds, "Nothin...just looking at you."

So hey, Gregory...thanks. I could've done it without you---could've quit smoking, could've started running again, biking again, swimming here and there, could've broken out of my cynicism, etc.--but I probably wouldn't have, and certainly not so quickly. So hey man, thanks. I hope you stick around for awhile, because I sure enjoy your company. I hope you feel the same about mine.