Everything You Knew is Wrong

I’m feeling very tired for most of this week, both physically and mentally.  I suffer from debilitating migraines, and I’ve had a tension headache since…Thursday, I think.  Maybe Wednesday, but I think I had just been hung over from too many margaritas at my birthday party on Tuesday night.  (The strawberry ones are so tasty, but I need to remember to order them without alcohol later in the evening…)

Anyway, the muscles of my forehead ache as if they’ve been strained, which leads to dizziness, nausea, and just plain feeling tired.  I can’t get any relief from it with painkillers, either, unlike a migraine.  “Maybe I thought too hard and I sprained my brain,” I joked to my mother earlier today.

Sure, it’s not medically possible, but it feels like that’s what happened.  On top of preparing to graduate and some general work woes, I’m at a spiritual impasse and feel terribly confused.

I didn’t quite realize what I got myself into when I decided to formally revert if one can do “formally” do such a thing.  There’s no ceremony, and it’s not like I left the Church–I only left regular practice.

I grew up in a church that was liberal to a fault, and my religious education was severely lacking, though my mother was able to fill in some gaps.  As I correct a lot of the incorrect things I learned, and fill in the remaining gaps, I become very anxious and start to wonder what, exactly, I’m doing, and whether I’d be better off, or at least happier, going back to my life as a lapsed-Catholic agnostic.

I can’t do things by halves.  When I take on a project or start a new hobby, I go all out or not at all.  But I’m not sure I can do what’s demanded of me if I go whole hog back into practicing Catholicism.  Yet easing in isn’t really an option either, since I have one hurdle to jump.  I learned only a short time ago that I’m not supposed to receive the Eucharist with mortal sins on my slate.  Seeing that the last time I went to confession was in 1997, I have…a few.  Regular confession isn’t something that I was ever taught was required; it was something to be done only when someone forced us to.

I’ve taken the route of simply not going to mass for the last few weeks.  The local offerings that don’t conflict with my weekend job range from “annoying” to “rampant liturgical abuse,” and I’m so tired and frustrated lately that I just think, “well, if I shouldn’t receive, then I lose the only thing that makes going to Mass worthwhile.”  Most people I know would overlook this and just receive anyway, but I wouldn’t be writing this blog or worrying myself sick about other theological issues if I were “most people.”  I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad, these days.

I recently learned that some local Franciscans have a lovely chapel in a strip mall; they have about eight hours of open reconciliation time every weekday, and a few daily Masses.

I thought that I would welcome this news, but it’s only increased my stress.  This news removes the one excuse I had left–no times convenient to my schedule for confession–and increases my anxiety.

It would be so much easier to turn and run away, and write off the last few months as an ill-fated experiment in devoutness.

The right thing to do is, of course, rarely the easiest.