{HUGS}

It's pretty common in online circles to give each other {HUGS}. (Or (HUGS) or [HUGS] or even ((((HUGS))))--you get the idea. When a friend or acquaintance is depressed, lost someone, is sick, or is just having a hard day, {HUGS} are sent and returned.

It's not the same thing, we know that. Supposedly real-body hugging actually increases the body's endorphins, a chemical reaction that can give us mild euphoria.

I like me a little mild euphoria.

But it's the best we can do without being anywhere near our friends. My "closest" friends are scattered over two countries. {HUGS} convey that we wish we could hug each other, give each other comfort and support, and it does help.

I'm incredibly lucky at this point in my life that I also get lots of real-life hugs. A six-year-old daughter is the tops in hugging. Plus husband, family...I get hugged every day.

It was not always so.

When I was 19, I set off for a year of study abroad in southern England (University of Sussex, woo-hoo!). I was part of an organized program, so I was taken care of. I lived with other students from the U.S., from England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, the Seychelles, Portugal, everywhere. I had people I hung out with. I had fun.

I was also, simultaenously, desperately homesick and lonely. By December Christmas was coming and I knew that (a) I didn't have anywhere to go--the dorms closed down, and all my friends already had plans; and (b) I still wasn't going to see my family for at least 4 months, and I wouldn't be home for 6 months. One of the program directors offered to host the Christmas holidays at his house in London for whichever Study Abroad students wanted to come.

I didn't know what else to do, so I went. I think eight of us went, all studying at different schools across the U.K., guys and girls mixed. None of us knew each other. We'd only met the director once, in our whirlwind entry in September. We were going to stay at his little London apartment for a week, bunking in the two beds and the floor in rotation, doing whatever we decided to do.

It was an amazing Christmas. For whatever reason--enforced company, similarities, chemistry--we all bonded straight off. We had long, wine-fueled talks into the night. We laughed our asses off trying to cobble together a Christmas meal in a minuscule, unfamiliar kitchen with recipes that measured in metric. We sang Christmas carols, comparing American and English versions. We walked together, through lightly falling snow, to midnight Christmas mass in St. Paul's Cathedral.

And I realized, on that Christmas Eve, after hugging every one of them, that I hadn't had a hug since I left my parents. That I NEEDED hugs. That maybe part of my loneliness was that lack of touch.

So I was touched by this guy. Yeah, maybe it could be a little creepy. But I think he just realized that some people don't have hugs in their lives, bone-crushing squeezy real hugs. And everybody needs one, now and again.

{HUG}