"Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he/she really is." -- Jim Morrison
Each time I have picked up “The Stuff of Thought” by Steven Pinker of late, I have read something that has been appropriate to a recent intellectual quandary. While on vacation in Lake Placid, Florida, I read a chapter that resolved several issues I was struggling with in the thesis I eventually proposed. Today, I found Pinker’s discussion of metaphor to tie together several thoughts and inspire me to write.
The English language has several types of metaphors. Most people will respond with examples of poetic or literary metaphors when asked to describe a metaphor such as, “She is the apple of my eye,” or “Jenifer is the sun blazing across the sky of my soul.” However, Pinker’s discussion of the conceptual metaphor, “love is a journey” resonated across several thoughts tonight, but first a little of bit of background.
Jenifer and I met at Barry University during the fall 2000 semester, but it was the fall semester of 2001 that really began our journey. On October 19, 2001 Jenifer joined me for dinner before we attended the Better Than Ezra concert in Boynton Beach, Florida. Considering myself a more than adequate cook, I prepared breaded chicken breasts with jalapeños, onions, and rice. To this day, I don’t remember why I put so many fresh jalapenos into the pan with the chicken. Whether it was an accident or some desire to give us something to laugh about for the next 8 years and counting has rightly been lost to the annuals of time. What is most memorable about that night is that the shared experience of crying while I cooked and sweating while we ate, cemented our friendship
On June 29th, 2009, I asked Jenifer to marry me. It was an incredible and special moment. I didn’t “pop” the question; she knew I was going to ask her that night. I didn’t feel any anxiety or doubt as to her answer; she had said several times that she would say yes. What I did feel as I asked was an amazing continuation from that time in October 2001 when we first spend an evening together, through that moment of verbalizing my love and intent, and into our future together. The storybooks say this moment represents a change in relationship metaphors, “As we begin down the road of life together, love is a grand journey.” For Jenifer and I, this one moment is better described by, “Add water and watch it grow.”
Jenifer and I had been traveling together for a long time before we came to realize we have been holding hands all this time. She has shown me unconditional love through some of my darkest times, even if she didn’t understand where the darkness was originating. We shared thoughts with each other that have never been trusted to the others that have come and gone from our lives. While we may have been on different roads, we were always side-by-side.
When we officially started dating on January 4th, 2009, there was a fair amount of trepidation about how to tell our friends and family. Although I had no doubt our families would be excited and supportive, there is a definite social stigma attached to friends who become lovers. Jen and I have been in the same circle of friends for a very long time and I expected a fair amount of good intentioned warnings about the chances of loosing such an important friendship if something happens and we were to break up. Instead, as we told more and more of our mutual friends, we got the same reply, “CONGRATULATES! It’s about time you two figured it out!” It seems most of our valued and trusted advisors, confidants, and protectors collectively decided to keep their mouths shut and let us wander about obvious to the obvious until we figured it out on our own. There were the occasional comments to be sure, but none that were at appropriate times or understood to be serious suggestions from the commenter. I am not bitter nor am I resentful because I know our friends love us very much. Our road together has thus far been filled with some amazing experiences, unconditional love, and unwavering support for each other. Reflecting on those experiences we often find ourselves laughing at the obviousness of hindsight, “Why didn’t we see this sooner.”
