Free Who You Know by Theresa Alan Page A

for him. It’s especially hard for him because she lives so close and he sees her so often when he goes to pick up the kids. So I spent most of the night just listening to him. I think the hardest thing for him is getting used to living alone. He got married right after college, so he’s never had to live by himself. My brother is the reason I moved out here nine years ago. He went to school and I was his roommate for a short time before they got married. I wish I could think of things to say to him that would make him feel better. I feel so powerless to help.
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    To: [email protected]
    From: [email protected]
    Just listening, being there for him, that means everything.
    In case it helps any, you can tell your brother the good things about living alone. In fact, sometimes I worry I like living alone too much. It’s nice never having anyone eat the leftovers I was planning on eating, never cleaning up after anyone but myself, never having to watch stupid action/adventure movies I hate in the spirit of compromise, even though I almost never did get to watch the art films I liked. I know I sound like a bitter divorcée, but I’m not angry with my ex, I’m angry with myself for not being true to myself.

    I felt it was rather brave of me to admit these things, particularly that I wasn’t a fan of action/adventure movies. But I wasn’t going to lie to myself or anyone ever again. If he didn’t love me for who I was, forget it. Being alone just wasn’t that bad.

    Sometimes it’s hard for me to imagine why I stayed with my ex as long as I did. The other day, though, something happened that made me ache to be in a relationship again.
    What happened was this: I burst out of my office, late for a meeting and not paying attention to where I was going, and I nearly ran into one of the guys who works in our IT department. His hand briefly, gently touched my arm to keep me from barreling into him—he sort of steered himself around me. Now, this guy is not good-looking, but the feeling of his hand briefly grazing my arm electrified me. I don’t mean sexually. I’m not sure if I can explain it, but I guess his touch made me realize that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten a hug or a back rub. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held somebody’s hand. I suddenly ached for human contact. I’d forgotten how amazing it is, the warmth of another person’s touch.
    Have a wonderful weekend. I’ll type to you Monday.

    I hope I didn’t sound desperate, but running into Les had been such a jarring experience, and I wanted to share my feelings about it with someone. It was nice to have a someone I could tell these random thoughts to.
    We usually restrained ourselves to writing each other once a day, but he must have been online because he wrote back within minutes.

    To: [email protected]
    From: [email protected]
    Human touch is truly powerful. You made me think of something from my childhood. When I was growing up, my mother jumped on every fad. She did the macrobiotic diet, Jazzercized, did yoga, tried every diet made, and nowadays, Prozac is her trend of choice. Anyway, the point of my story was to tell you about this one fad of my mother’s when I was about eleven. She had this hug group, and they would actually have these meetings where they got together and discussed the importance of hugging. The leader of the group handed out this flyer that Mom stuck to the fridge that said you needed to be hugged at least 12 times a day just for survival, 15 times for peace, and 20 for true happiness—something like that. I remember thinking that a lot of things in the world managed to survive without 12 hugs a day, but you’d need at least a hug or two to be happy. That did make sense to me, even then.
    I hated when we had those meetings at our house. Those people would hug anything, and the women would wear the most god-awful