i had forgotten a lot of things until tonight.

i had forgotten the feelings.

not so much as forgotten, but had let them slide underneath everything else. underneath stress, underneath kim and then emily, underneath time.

and it is more than safe to say that i miss her, deeply.

there are people who have come into my life after her, people who i know will walk away with a bit of my heart no matter what happens. people like kim, emily. other people i don't talk of as much. people i hold dear.

and i know it's a big thing to do, something i shouldn't do sometimes, give away pieces of my heart. it leaves me missing something sometimes.

but i know that no matter who comes, who leaves, there will never be another her. there will never be someone who gave me a piece of myself. who finally fleshed my bones into something worth standing upright and moving.

and i often wonder about the decisions ive made. if they've been right or not. here i am, within months of making a major, life changing decision, and i'm scared to death. i dont know what's right, i don't know if i should run away or run toward emily or join the corporate world in pennsylvania where i know no one.

and there were times, with emily, when i laid next to her and she listened to me and she talked and we just laid there, in the dark, when it felt like i had made the right decisions.

but you can never be sure.

and i wonder, sometimes, what might have happened if the girl and i felt the same way about each other at the same time. if our lives hadn't diverged as they have. i worry, slightly, about the guy she's with, about a man who doesn't trust her fully.

i wonder if that might have been a right decision. if an us might have been a right decision.

and there's this feeling, deep in me, that it wouldnt have been.

that we would have laughed and had fun, but that she wasn't ready and i wasn't ready and that as much as she is in me, as much as she's given me, there's someone else out there that is the right decision.

there's someone else out there that i can talk to, that i can listen to, that i can just lay with, late at night, in the dark.

and i'm moving toward that, i think. that right feeling.

but the girl, she makes me wonder.

she'll be there when i marry, and i'll be there when she does. and maybe there won't ever be that giant romance that has the potential to be there. or had the potential, at one time, at least.

but i'll know, standing up there next to the person i'll give the rest of my life to, that i have made the right decision.

be it leaving here for arizona or following something else into another sunset, it will be the right decision.