Hug

I've been alone most all of my life, for as long as I can remember. As a child, mom worked a split shift at work. She'd take my brother and I to school in the morning, went to work, picked us up and got us started on homework and dinner, then went back to work from about 6p-10p which was bedtime when she got home. My brother spent most of those evening hours in his bedroom, watching his shows on his TV, while I got the living room. Not a bad arrangement space wise, but not too conducive to conversation. Thinking back on it now, we didn't even share the household chores. One or the other of us would trade off the kitchen and cleaning duties day to day, not even working to do things together like washing and drying the dishes. It wasn't that we didn't like each other, it was just that we never really got to know each other. He liked movies and role playing games, I liked sports and music. In a lot of ways we were very different and at the same time very similar, two latch-key kids who grew up separately together.

Moving onto high school, things didn't change all that much. I went to a high school located in Boca Raton, about 20 miles away from home and not the one a majority of my grade school classmates attended. Our family had only the one car, which mom needed for work, so I rode the bus to and from school. This distance gap wasn't the only thing that separated me from the group. Boca Raton is a much more affluent city than my hometown, with the expected class separation between teen have's and have not's. Not that it really mattered all that much. In a school of upper crust, well to do teenagers, a fat, glasses-wearing, no-car, nerd in the Honors Society and Math Club wasn't going to have many, if any friends. A foundation of being alone had been set by the time I was out of my teens.

Since those days of my youth I've become accustomed to being alone. I am used to dining alone, attending a game or concert by myself, or playing golf as the stranger in a foursome. It is just the way I am and suspect I will always be. But being lonely is entirely different from being alone. I would define being lonely as the times when it would be nice to have someone to come home to or to pal around with on a weekend. Being alone is fine, and can be liberating to a point, but being lonely sucks. I am alone most of the time, and lonely on occasion. Kylie has a thought provoking post today about on-line friends vs. real life friends. I have a lot of on-line friends who mean a great deal to me. We pick each other up when we are down, we share a laugh or smile or cry, we offer advice and we throw month long birthday parties. But as wonderful as on-line friends are, sometimes you need a real life hug. When you are alone, you know that hug is not coming and that is when it becomes even more lonely.

Never discount the value of a hug, whether it be a cordial greeting or a mighty bear hug. They all have great meaning, especially to those who rarely get them and desperately need them.