Not the Me I Want to Be, Part Two (Chr)

by Charity

The only difference between who Mary has become and who I thought I was is the fact that I've always considered myself a Christian, and Mary isn't one.  She considers herself more of an agnostic/eclectic/spiritual-but-not-religious kind of person. And now I....well, in my ongoing struggles, I've lost all semblance of faith.  If I ever had it.  I had religion.  I doubt if I ever had faith.

The difference between my "faith" and that of the Christian children and teens in our system is that all of them have a faith built on relationship.  It's non-denominational, bible-based, and personal.  But my beliefs always revolved formulaic prayers and rituals, the tactile stuff that made Catholicism different from other Christian denominations.  I should say that we were born Jewish, raised without religion, and that we converted to Catholicism when the body was 27.  We stopped going to church when the body was 39.

As a child I was fixated on Catholicism.  Even when I was a toddler with no exposure to any religion, I felt a connection.  One day I saw two nuns walking down the street and pointed to them and said "Sisters."  And that was only the beginning.  We had a friend down the block who went to Catholic school, and I envied her.  I wanted to wear the uniform and obey the nuns and wear a first-communion dress and go to religious instruction on Wednesdays....When the other 13-year-olds all had their confirmations, and the parties that followed, I felt left out.  And I never forgot that feeling.

The problem was that even when I finally pursued conversion, not everyone in our system agreed with me.  They gave in because they knew how badly I wanted to go through with it.  And I dove in, becoming actively involved in the church for about seven years.  Then we realized that we were multiple, and we knew that we couldn't pretend to be something we were not.  So we stopped participating in church activities, and by 2001 we had stopped going to church altogether.

It all feels like such a long time ago.

Now, with no real faith to lean on, I have nothing to give me strength.  I just feel alone, afraid, and angry.  And I don't see this changing any time soon.