tina and i will be entertaining guests tomorrow night:
we have invited timo and paul for dinner.

i used to regard both of them as mates, a few years ago.
when i started uni, i did what the majority of young female law students did: i partied, and partied hard, at the local fraternities.

tina and i, we weren't just casual party-goers, we were die hard regulars at one particular frat house, spending almost all of our weekends there, being involved in traditional rituals, going to lunches as well as their balls, serving as dance partners during ballroom classes, the whole deal. - all that, even though at the parties, we often felt like nothing but decorations, like part of the inventory.
looking back on it, it's hard to ignore my stupidity and blindness back then, playing high society with these insecure, stupid boys who were thinking they were the future leaders of this country.
strangely enough, despite all the superficiality, tina and i had fun, at least for a while. lots of fun, actually.
we both met tons of people there, not all of them jerks, and did good stuff, experienced cool events, making casual friends in the process.
timo and paul were always good blokes, both doing theology, timo with the goal of becoming a priest (ever since tina rejected him, actually, hello thornbirds!), paul with the goal of becoming a teacher. they were blokes i liked and knew, that i spend time with, renting movies, hanging out outside the frat house.
with paul, things were maybe a bit more close than with timo. paul used to tell me about the gals he had crushes on, he used to sit on my balcony ogling the next door balcony, because one of his crushes lived there. no matter what, we were never really close, super-tight friends, always mates.

three years ago, when i first got depressed for real, i drastically cut ties to many people and things. within a very short period of time, i stopped seeing tina, stopped going to frat houses, stopped going to uni for a while and got rid of all casual and superficial friendships. - almost all friendships i entertained back then belonged to that category. that included both timo and paul.
i made myself very very lonely.

it wasn't that anything was inherently wrong about timo and paul, or about our casual friendship, there was nothing that they had done wrong. somehow, i just couldn't deal anymore, with so many things that summer. couldn't deal with anyone, or anything, couldn't pretend anymore to be someone i wasn't. i was never the happy go lucky frat house girl.

timo, paul and i, we were never so close that i could have come right out and told either of them what was wrong with me. neither of them belonged to the group of people who called me for months and who kept leaving messages, even though i never returned any calls.
when i dropped out of the frat circle, out of the friendship with tina, and out of their lives, too, i never got the impression they cared that much. - i always thought that anyone wanting to be in touch with me knew where i lived, could easily find out my phone number, and would get in touch (even if my depressed self didn't react to any attempts), but they never did.
apparently, they still cared on some strange level nonetheless. - not enough to make an effort, but enough to keep asking tina whether she knew how i was, even when she too, dropped out of the frat circle 2 years after me, when she split with the frat boyfriend i never really liked.

shortly after tina and i had reconciled earlier this year, tina ran into paul and told him about seeing me again. since then, he and timo have been keen to meet both tina and me. paul and timo are flatmates, they share one of the ugliest, dirtiest kitchen in town and are both hungry at all times, so tina and i thought cooking for them would be a good thing.

so we're doing that tomorrow night.

i'm curious about it, and nervous, too. not because of cooking dinner, i'm making stroganoff, and that's easy and quick and will work out fine - it's nothing to loose sleep over.

i wonder about this:
tina and i, we picked our friendship up almost where we left it. - now what will it be like with those two? will we have stuff to talk about? will there be weirdness? how will it work out? i wonder and worry, just a little.

this time tomorrow night, i will know.