Could've Been Catholic

It's not infrequent that someone tells me I could have been a Catholic. Not for my knowledge of all things Jesus (which really should be indistinguishable from a good Catholic considering I majored in World Religion in college), but because of my intimate relationship with guilt.

Nothing beats the standard of good ol' Catholic guilt.

Growing up my parents introduced me to the idea of God as a way of being, more than an act of doing. We called ourselves "Christians," but as far as I could tell, that just meant we could celebrate Christmas, which was a-okay with me.

Actually, of all my family members, I was the least resistant to organized religion. In fact, I was a wannabe Catholic who would tag along with my friends to church whenever they would bemoan they had to go. Worse than that, I'd beg that we sit in the first pew so I could get a good look at the priest, so as not to miss a moment.

Like a Sunday School callgirl, I was just a phone call away. . .

What left me wistfully sidelined was the mystifying world of catechism. That was one place I wasn't allowed into, but I'd take whatever I could get, leaving my parents rather speechless that I'd rather go to church than hang out at home and play.

The other place I was forbidden from crashing was the confessional booth. My good friend Khela, a devote Catholic, would appease my creeping sense of guilt by promising to ask for forgiveness of me too whenever she went to confession, even for things like when we ran over a dead bird with our bikes.

One Sunday, up in the front pew, Khela nearly died with embarrassment when at the end of mass I stretched my arm out, imitating the priest, and blessed him rather than making the sign of the cross on myself.

Who knows where I adopted this sense of guilt; maybe after all of the time I spent wishing I were Catholic, I just got blessed with its infamous sense of iniquity.

Even if its origins come from my childhood, it shows up in the middle of the night in my adulthood.

Lately, it seems to be particularly insiduous on nights when the hours, and then days, start stacking up since I last heard from Jack. Before he deployed (i.e. before I had something worth worrying about), it's as though my guilt needed a punching bag. Anguished over dumb thoughts about failed friendships, I'd be haunted by guilt that perhaps if I'd been a better friend, or done things "just right," I could have salvaged those connections from becoming a mere artifact of college.

On nights like these, when all odds say he is just fine, my guilt finds a crack in my foundation and slips into my head. After it kicks the sleeping dog better known as "Fear," Guilt makes me wonder if all that matters in my world might come crashing down because I haven't been the perfect person I should have been. Then it turns my eye to what I "ought" to do better, or just differently. Often it throws in random demands, making me promise to give up small pleasures in life like chocolate, bananas, and cheese in exchange for another day towards Jack's safe return.

Any shrink would surely say this is my way of feigning control over that which I lack; yet I can't help but wonder if I just should have become a Catholic and at least had the upside to all this guilt.

Wishing you a guilt-free existence,
The Derelict and Her Daughter