I was raised to believe in God. For a long time I did, and then I didn’t, and then I did again. Now? I think the question of God is irrelevant. I am more interested in theories like serendipity and synchronicity.

When I was in elementary school, we took a field trip to the zoo. There were big black bears growling in a cage. These bears frightened some of the children. The frightened children moved their backs against the brick wall opposite the cage, back away from what their instincts told them was a threat. Other children, embolden by the separation of bars, hurled insults and pennies at the animals. I stood still and expressionless, trying desperately to fight the urge to snatch the keys from the belt of our tour guide and unlock the cage door. It was not so much a desire to free the animals as it was an insatiable curiosity to see how a crowd would behave if confronted with a snarling beast and no bars to protect them. At that very moment, as I struggled with my own impulse, our pimply-faced tour guide leaned over to admit to our teacher that a mistake had recently been made. The person in charge of cleaning the bear cage had accidentally left the door unlocked overnight. The zookeepers thought it quite a blessing that the bears, left to their own devices for over 12 hours, had never wandered outside of their own imprisonment. I heard the tour guide tell all of this to our teacher and suddenly I was all four feet of pigtails and pasty Irish skin trying to hide my tears. I stood in front of that bear cage, this awkward little girl, and I cried. When my teacher saw my distress, she leaned down to ask what was wrong. I could not find the words to explain it.

For the past two weeks, I have been thinking about that trip to the zoo. I was even thinking about it the day that I went to my local library and checked out The Maytrees by Annie Dillard. Synchronicity? Dillard introduced me to Casper Hauser. Up until last week, Hauser was as unfamiliar to me as the walls of the dark cage he was raised in. All those years being raised with nothing but shadow, his own unfettered mind, a cot, and a wooden horse. At 17, Hauser was abruptly released into the streets of Germany by his unknown captors. He purportedly carried nothing but a piece of paper inscribed with his name. Here is the part that amazes me. Even after being imprisoned for over 17 years, Hauser did not show any anger towards his captors. Only once did he show any negative emotion regarding what happened to him. His only negative response occurred after he witnessed his very first smattering of stars. His chest heaved with the knowledge of depravation. He was quoted as saying, “My captors should be jailed for a few days for withholding the sky.” I may be lazy about my belief in God, but I am certain about my faith in Annie Dillard’s version of Casper Hauser.

Did you ever see the movie Serendipity with Jon Cusak? Okay. I know it appears that I am changing gears here, but stay with me.  I think everything may be connected. I think, but I am not sure. Anyway, the movie is a big pile of crap. The movie confuses serendipity with fate, just so it can trot out the big soulmate cliche and entertain a bunch of teenage girls and housewives who need to believe that it is there destiny to be loved like movie stars. This is not serendipity. Serendipity is when you discover something necessary while on a quest for something else. The point is that you have to be searching for something in order for serendipity to happen. I am not sure if finding Casper Hauser in the same week I tried to process my feelings about that trip to the zoo is serendipity or synchronicity. Hell. Maybe it is God. If so, I imagine he is laughing.

The evening of that day my elementary school class went to the zoo, I stretched myself out on my small bed. I stared at the ceiling. I practiced the art of revision. I was a writer even then. I was only little and lacking all the necessary tools, but gifted with a reckless imagination. I envisioned my field trip much differently than the way it had been. I pictured it the way I would have liked it to be. In my re-telling, I do get my small hands around the zoo-keeper’s keys. I unlock the heavy cage door before anyone can stop me. The biggest of the black bears lumbers out, growling, he moves towards us. Children and adults scream and scatter. In the center of all this confusion, I stand firm. I throw my head back like God. I laugh too. I laugh like a crooked finger pointing directly at the stars.

I know some of you clicked on over because I told you that this post was about you. It is okay. Have you ever stood in front of a mirror searching your own reflection for such a long time that you become all distorted, like a cubist painting, a mere abstraction, a metaphor instead of an actually person? Yeah. Me too.

I feel totally lost. Totally alone.

I said this after we disentangled. Our naked bodies, that only moments before were crushed against the seat covers of my Dodge Charger, resumed their boundaries inside of clothes. I lit a cigarette. I offered him one. He declined because he didn’t smoke. There was no way I could have know that. We were intimate strangers, having stumbled into each other in our hometown bar. I was home from college. He was unwinding after a long day on the job. I studied Camu. He worked construction. The previous year we had graduated from high school. Four years without speaking a word to each other. We traveled in different circles. He had been king of the hallways. I had been chubby, shy, slouching in back rows in flea-market blouses.

I’m not even sure how we got to that moment. Sitting in my darkened car in the church parking lot around the corner from my house. We were these awkward, tender moments after almost having sex.

I don’t really want to do this. This isn’t what I need. I had found the courage to speak only minutes before penetration.

He was surprisingly polite about it, not like the college boys who would tell me beautiful lies, insistent on seducing me against the narrow ache of squeaky dorm room bed-springs. No. He climbed right off. He pulled on his pants and laughed inside of moonlight.

REM played on the radio. He asked if he could turn it up, admitted that he loved the song. He surprised me. I remembered the deep throb of bass and lyrical misogyny that thumped loudly from the open windows of the four wheel drive he brazenly parked in the teacher’s lot of our high school.

Everybody hurts. Sometimes.

We could talk. Would it be alright if we just talk? I pulled nervously on my cigarette and worried about what we would actually say to one another.

He nodded his head. Yeah. I’d like to talk. I can’t always talk to my friends, ya know? It’s like we have to do everything together. It’s like I’m trapped back in high school. Same friends, same girlfriends, same bars. And yet, everyone expect so much from me. I’m suppose to figure out everyone’s future. How am I suppose to do that when I have no idea about my own? Sometimes I wish I could just escape it all. Be gone.

I reclined into his words. Leaned my head back. Counted the stars. There were entire worlds, beyond the rolled down windows of my car, that I would never touch.

You won’t tell anyone I said that, will you? His concern was genuine, but unnecessary.

I reached out and touched his hand. I was tentative. He was not. He wrapped his fingers around mine. We sat together, silent as stars. We listened to the song.

When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,
When you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life, well hang on

We never talked like that again.  We ran into each other a few months later at that same bar. We made a silent pact. He smiled, and nodded his head.  I waited until he had turned the strong of his back before I mouthed the words, Thank You. It was enough.

A year later, he died. He got into a fist fight in front of that same bar. He stumbled, fell, split open his head against the concrete. Our hometown was shocked. They mourned, hung brightly colored wreaths of flowers, lit candles, and put homemade cards along the sidewalk next to the imperceptible stain. It was a reminder. We are all breakable.

Our entire graduating class showed up at the funeral. His friends sat, dazed and bereft, in the pews next to anonymous girls who told stories like writing his name in ink-stained hearts across their notebooks in English class. The girls wept loud and obvious. Boys, who hated him for his ability to seduce their girlfriends and beat them in every sports, bowed their heads in dramatized prayer. The crawl of over 100 cars trailed behind the hearse like a slow line of dirty tears.

I did not return home for the funeral. Why would I? We were not friends. Instead, the day they put his body into the ground, I waited for the sun to set. I walked out to the man-made lake of my college campus. I spread my blanket on the ground. I put my headphones on. As Michael Stipe crooned, I laid myself back, head tipped towards the heavens, I did not cry. Instead…I pointed a crooked finger at the sky. I counted stars.

If you feel like you’re alone, no, no, no, you are not alone