Time to see what's become of me

In the last few weeks I've had a few very old friends get in touch through the medium of facebook. One I've not seen in the best part of a decade and the others I haven't seen since I was at school 16 years ago. The former of these three was a very close friend when we started at Glasgow Uni, and indeed introduced me to ex love of my life Sam, but when he left we kind of found ourselves moving in different circles and all my moving around the country didn't help. So now having found out that I'm at home he's going to come up and visit.

The other two are both even longer standing friends from back at school. The male one was my best friend from about Primary 5 through to his leaving secondary school at 16. I used to get updates about him from my dad as he is now a plumber and my dad used to help him out with stuff when he came into the shop but since my dad died he has gone abroad to work. Turns out he didn't even know my dad had died so was gutted to find out so long after it happened.

The third one is a girl who I was very fond of at school. She still lives nearby and is going to come up and visit me at some point too.

The reason I mention this is that I don't know how I feel about them coming. On one hand I really want to catch up with them and to tell them my story but I worry that they're going to see me in my current state of disrepair. This, after all, isn't the me that I like people to see. I'm not particularly keen on anyone knowing that I have weaknesses of any sort never mind the range of them that I currently exhibit.

The thing is that while I can handle sympathy for my situation, I worry that some people might pity me. There's a clear distinction in my mind between the two but in my addled state of mind I can't quite find the words to explain it adequately.

Of course rather than fretting about how other people are going to behave, which is quite obviously out of my control, I should concern myself only with how I am going to. These are all people that I was close to at some stage or another and I am genuinely excited to hear their stories, perhaps because when you look at people you went to school with there's a feeling that the path they took is one that was also available to you. They're living lives that could easily have been mine but for a few choices.