Self, Heartbreak

To See Or Not To See

To See Or Not To See

Last week, I wrote an album review for a band that Alex introduced me to a couple years ago. Even though he listened to them first, I quickly put the group's last few albums in my regular rotation and jumped at the chance to cover their most recent release.

After the review went up online, I thought it'd be nice to tell Alex about it. After all, he suggested I listen to them in the first place. I've always believed in giving credit where credit is due.

I sent him the link and he wrote me back the next day. He liked the review and suggested a couple of other bands I might want to check out, then filled me in on what's been happening in his life. It was a great email–a friendly reminder of why I liked him in the first place. He's a funny, genuinely good person who has great taste in music (among other things). But that, of course, doesn't mean our problems would all be magically fixed if we were to give it another shot. It just means he's a cool person.

In any case, I started thinking about how much of a presence, ideally, I'd like Alex to have in my life. Since we don't live in the same city (or even the same state), there's never been the possibility of running into each other accidentally. We've never had to consider whether or not we'd like to hang out sometimes or even see each other at all. The only involvement we've had is what we've initiated ourselves, and we've mostly stuck to occasional email.

Part of me would like to talk to him more regularly, but then again, I know there wouldn't be much of a point to that. I don't want to get back together, and as long as we keep in touch and know approximately what's going on in each other's lives, I'm happy. If we switched to weekly phone calls or regular texts, I think it'd be overkill.

Still, I'm curious what it would be like to actually see each other again face to face. Physically meeting, looking at each other, and holding a conversation over drinks (trust me, there would need to be drinks)–that's on a whole other level than the occasional catching-up email.

When I wrote Alex back after my album review, I threw in a line at the end: "If you're ever in New York, let me know." Whether we'll see each other again is still up in the air, but I'm not ready to close that door quite yet.