June 11, 2012

If you see something, say something.


You meet someone at a bar (even though you never meet people in bars), and have a wonderful conversation. You realize you have a lot in common while also finding them attractive. After hours have passed in what feels like a blur, you think to yourself that you’ve hit the jackpot because this is most definitely going to become a future date. This person has possibility, this person could be someone you like (and you don’t like anyone!).

They ask for your number, and you try not to think about all the people who have asked for your number before and never called. You’re trying to be optimistic this time. The phrase, “Benefit of the doubt” comes to mind even though you’re not entirely sure what that’s really supposed to mean. They tell you you’re wonderful, go on how much they want to see you again, and just as you're allowing yourself to believe they're actually telling you the truth, they tell you they’re flying home to Austin, Texas tomorrow.

You deflate. You actually feel it happening to your heart as the words come out of their mouth.

So you go home with a strange and unsettling feeling in your stomach, the one that comes when you recognize a missed opportunity. You repeat to yourself the phrase that all people who feel powerless to a situation tell themselves: It just wasn’t meant to be.

Two days later, however, they text you. You’re surprised to hear from them. You’re even more surprised when they say that if they lived in New York they would have wanted to take you out to dinner, or a coffee, anything to have had another chance to see you again. But they can’t, so instead they want to stay in touch, and ask you how your day went. This makes you upset. You think about all of the people who have asked for your number in the past and live only a few subway stops away and never reached out to ask you anything, let alone how your day went. But this guy. Well, of course.

So you sit. You sit for a long time staring at your phone contemplating your limited choices in this particular situation. You either respond and start up a conversation with a near stranger who is currently halfway across the country but has still somehow managed to captivate your thoughts, or you don’t. It takes you a long time to come to a decision. You think about how you’ve been here before, somehow having become incapable of meeting people who live in the same city as you, but finding that when you leave Manhattan all of that seems to change.

You have theories on yourself and geography, and figure that one day you'll inevitably be forced to leave the island if you ever really want to find love. Because of that, you have been open to the idea that geography shouldn’t really be a factor when it comes to finding someone you can have a good conversation with, (and years of meeting people in Manhattan has shown you that’s almost impossible to find someone with whom you can have a good conversation). Surely distance shouldn’t matter, not now, not in 2012. Wasn’t the whole point of progress and technology to teach us that we’re not limited by our zip codes? We can text and Skype and get great deals on JetBlue - shouldn’t it be possible to love across state lines?

But, like most things, it’s never that simple. Because if you have been here before, you know all too well that there will come a point when you’ve spent a lot of time getting to know someone through means of communication that doesn’t involve sitting across a dinner table, and it will be great and you’ll become invested, and one day you will even go to visit them and come to find that they have in fact, like a normal person, met someone they can see on a somewhat daily basis. Someone they can see a movie with, hold hands with, have an actual physical relationship with. These things trump all else. They even trump good conversation, and chemistry and the basic fact that you like each other when even the both of you know that finding someone you like and likes you back and wants what you want at the exact came time you do is tantamount to hitting the lottery.

Even that will be overlooked for a person who’s in reaching distance.

Well, you suppose, that makes sense.

So this time you tell yourself you’ve learned. Because you can know what you want in life, you can find it even, have it right there in front of you —but that isn't always enough. It’s a sobering feeling to have in a world that makes you feel as though there are no limits, when you come to find that in the end, no matter how much you try, when it comes to matters of the heart there are always meant to be limits, and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it.

Something as seemingly insignificant as the place you’ve chosen to live can change everything. Geography stepping in, setting its own restrictions on you without you even realizing.

So you look at the phone and you make a conscious decision not to write back. You do it against your own better judgment, but you know it’s the right thing to do, (and the right thing is never easy). Sometimes you’re just meant to meet people for a brief period of time, and that’s all it’s supposed to be (this is also what all people who feel powerless to a situation tell themselves).

You do, however, sometimes find yourself at random moments on the subway or walking up Broadway, wondering about what could have happened if you'd just written back. Maybe, just maybe, this time it would have been different. You’d have stayed in touch, you’d have moved on to talking on the phone (even though you don't particularly like talking on the phone). You’d have visited Texas or they would have come to New York. You'd have started making plans, realizing that even though you were both still dating in your respective cities, you just weren’t meeting people you liked as much as you liked each other. And you’d have moved to Texas or they to New York or who knows, maybe you’d have ended up somewhere else entirely, and gotten married and bought a house with a garage and taken out a mortgage and had kids and grown old together, always telling that funny story about how one night you met in a bar in Manhattan.

And telling the story you’d realize that there was a moment when it all came down to you. There you’d be, older now, graying, telling your grandchildren the tale. You’ll say something like, “You know, if I never wrote back, if I just ignored the message entirely because I assumed I already knew how it was going to end, none of you would even be here.”

Life can be funny that way. And mysterious and mind-boggling, always making you question whether or not you’re making the right choice, always leaving you wondering about what could have been (and "what could have been" can torture you forever).

But you try to remind yourself about what you know about life, that it isn't a movie. You tell yourself you know better. Because you do, don’t you?

And then you wonder when it was that you decided to stop taking chances.

The city reminds you at every turn: IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. When it comes to most things in life, from national security to love, you never know what something could be if you make the choice not to do anything. Anything only ever changes if you do.

So you decide that you don’t know it all and never will and it’s foolish to ever think so. Next time, you vow to yourself, you won't be so afraid. Because the signs that read “Be suspicious of anything left unattended,” ought to apply to your heart as well.