I promised my parents that I wouldn’t allow the chaos of college to prohibit me from going to mass regularly. I wish that I had kept that promise but I have gone to a service once on my own since coming to ASU. I can make excuses for this all day:
“I forgot it was Sunday”
“I overslept”
“I didn’t have the proper clothes to go”
And whatever else I have convinced myself is a valid reason for not going. But in all honesty, the only reason that I haven’t gone to mass on my own is that I have no desire to and that feels horrible to say. I feel like a shitty Catholic admitting that I do not want to participate in a service and with no one holding me accountable but myself, I haven’t.
I still believe and I still hold my faith close to my heart, but the more I reflect on my membership in the Catholic Church, the more I realize I have a lot of unresolved issues and traumas that have come out of my religion. I don’t want to bash Catholicism because, at the end of the day, I am a Catholic, and no matter what negative experiences I have encountered within the church, I will always be a Catholic. But that also means that I have work to do in confronting my religious relationship and it is my self-imposed responsibility to challenge the ideals that created those negative experiences in the first place.
The church has been an integral part of who I am for my entire life and coming to terms with the fact that it isn’t the greatest thing to happen to me is hard. It makes me feel like a disappointment in my faith and ashamed for questioning and doubting.
For the next year, I am challenging myself to work on repairing my religious life and hopefully helping to continue and uplift the conversation around things like religious trauma and Catholic guilt. And I hope that as I embark on this journey I can find some peace in where I am.