Months later I can remember all of them, down to the slightest idiosyncrasies and quirks. They were my friends and they’re gone now. There’s a hole in my life where they were. Sometimes I’ll remember something they said or did and it’ll hit me like a ton of bricks. They’re gone now and I'm only left with memories of them. I’m sorry for being maudlin and bringing everyone down, but I think this is the only way I can really introduce my story and explain why I feel like I have to type this out. I think that writing this is the only way I can learn to accept that. I’ll try to keep these downer tendencies to myself as I’m writing all of this down, but I can’t make promises.

I know that being the third wheel in a group can be a terrible thing, but I can think of something worse, being the fifth wheel. If you’re the third wheel, that makes your group a semi-functional tricycle. If you’re the fifth wheel, you’re left as some obscure car from the fifties that no one remembers or cares about. Imagine not being able to follow the in-jokes and shared history of one couple and multiply that by two. Getting stuck as the fifth wheel is twice as bad. That was the frame of mind I had as we all piled into Ian’s car to go to Gila National Forest for our hike.