[ 03-14-05 ] [ 2:12 a.m.]
[ Three is sometimes the loneliest number ]

Friend repellant warning. Liz, you may want to skip this.

Oh no.

I had a feeling this might have been going on in the mind of one of my best friends, but how does one go about asking? It's not like I could say, "hey, Liz, do Carol and I make you feel like a third wheel?"

I wish our friendships didn't have to be like this. I know how badly it sucks to be the one left out. I was the "runt kid" at my babysitter's when I was growing up, always the nanny when we played House. Things like that I've been pretty well able to put behind me, but they start to surface again when I read things like that. Not because I'm mad at Liz for feeling that way - no, because I hurt for her, hurt that she has to go through something that thoroughly and completely sucks.

For the record, Carol and I are sometimes unbearably mushy in public. I know we were pretty bad during the trip to Waukesha. Holding hands, sneaking kisses in the parking lot, snuggling and things like that - and honestly, it was really inconsiderate of us. We went to Waukesha to see Liz and to spend time with her, and yet she managed to feel left out. I can't even begin to explain how I didn't see it then. Maybe I was so desperate for the time with Carol that I became blind to anything else.

Either way, it doesn't excuse me or my behavior.

I thought about the trip a little bit after Carol left on Saturday, and I realized that Liz could have been feeling exactly what she's feeling. I was going to ask her, but then I realized that if she hadn't been thinking about it, I would have planted the thought in her head.

How does one go about apologizing for something like this? An "I'm sorry" over the internet can't cut it. I especially don't want her to think that she's losing my friendship or my attention. She is just as important to me as Carol is, just in a very different way.

My mom always used to tell me that trios were the hardest kind of friendships to be a part of. Inevitably, she told me, one starts to feel like the third wheel. When the trio was formed, I was so paranoid about being the third wheel that I became the third wheel. Then Carol and I got together, and things started to change.

I love Carol and Liz to death. I don't want either of them to feel like they're on the outside looking in.

And I will not lose their friendships, even if it kills me.

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