I’ve struggled— I am struggling— to adequately describe what it’s like to feel your spiritual foundation crumble beneath you. The further I get from the moment I realized I was standing on the last unstable bits— a terrifying, gut-wrenching moment— the more I realize I am in the throes of a long, impenetrable grief.

As a medically anxious person, I spiral in the absence of plans and certainty. I need structure to feel anchored. When I believed in God and all His promises, it didn’t matter if my mortal plans weren’t completely laid because I knew exactly where I was going eventually, for eternity. The first thing my faith crisis took from me was this certainty. I spent my entire life seeking to avoid eternal suffering, and suddenly this suffering looked very real and unavoidable. My deepest fears as a practicing Catholic came true, and I still haven’t fully considered the implications of this— the way fear is used as a tool to keep you from asking questions, and how this fear warps your insides when you swallow it until you can’t. 

I’ve wanted to be a Good person for as long as I can remember. Every mistake I made— every time I talked back, fought with my brother, forgot my homework— was added to the list of reasons why I was Bad. A list that, according to my faith, gained its first entry upon my conception. Original sin is a stain on your soul. Allegedly, this stain is rubbed clean through the sacrament of Baptism, which is why Catholics baptize babies— scrub the stain immediately. You are born Bad, and can only be made Good by promising your life and soul to God.

So I promised. I prayed and I read the Bible, in class at school and on my own, one for kids then one for teen girls then the good, old-fashioned, 73-book official New American Catholic Bible. I cross-referenced the Catechism and took notes in journals. I prayed and prayed and prayed and constantly asked why, if I had an entire roadmap pointing me to Good laid out in front of me, was it so hard to get there? In this yearning, I sharpened my ability to judge every word I spoke, every thought in my brain, and every single action (or failure to act) against an unattainable rubric, something I still do constantly.

I turned to prayer often, more often than I care to remember. I usually talked to God whenever my mind went idle. Formally when I was younger, then much more casually as I was exposed to my friends’ cooler nondenominational churches, where they closed their eyes, raised their hands, and called God “an awesome father.” I never heard or discerned anything in return. I used to beg for signs, even though I knew exactly why I wasn’t seeing any. Saints and prophets heard God’s voice because they were worthy. I was not, so I heard nothing. 

I was always conscious of this “unworthiness.” When I was Confirmed, I spent months trying to think of which saint’s name to adopt. I was not brave like any of the martyrs, so not Joan or Cecilia or Agnes. I was not loving or caring, so not Anne or Agatha or Monica. I settled on St. Therese the Little Flower, because she attained sainthood through simple, practical acts of kindness. If Therese could do it, then so could I.

I think part of why losing my faith has been so painful is because I’ve never once spoken about my doubts to anyone, not in any meaningful way. The stakes were much too high, plus once I spoke them, those doubts became real. When I was younger and struggling with questions, I never felt comfortable enough around any faith leaders to ask them, and the same was true with my peers. I didn’t belong to a youth group or church organization. As I got older, the isolation became overwhelming. I craved intimacy, between myself and God as well as other Catholics, and never saw that longing fulfilled. But I still tried so hard to believe. I dug deeper into prayer, soul flayed, repenting, repenting. Agony in the Garden. I created a gaping void in myself, a place so deep I’m afraid I’ll never be able to get there again. And once I lost my faith, I built a tomb over that void and sealed it the fuck shut. Stop the bleeding.

I feel the pain of this loss, not all the time, but often enough. I fixate on the things I missed in my quest to be Good: pleasure and experiences and an identity that I am still trying to figure out. I am so angry. I am mourning. It hurts. It’s so, so ugly. And I still can’t help but wish that I had enough blind faith to cry out to a savior that is somehow more powerful than therapy and psychiatry and all of the ways I’ve tried to cope. But I don’t. 

The coping part has been fun. I’ve tried my hardest to inject some hedonism into my every day life, despite the remnants of Catholicism’s best attempts to conflate pleasure with sin. I’ve let myself continue to love religious imagery, and I’ve truly leaned into that— I can feel the power and gravity draining with every frivolous collectible I purchase and tattoo I get. I hunt for iconography and novelty t-shirts at thrift stores and online. Some of my best finds include a shirt printed with the serenity prayer in baby pink Curlz MT font and an enormous blood-red ceramic rosary that weighs 15lbs and hangs on my wall. I’m saving up for a large-scale back tattoo of St. Teresa in ecstasy. It’s not all bad. 

However, I am not thrilled at the likely prospect of unpacking all of this for years to come. But I have to admit that as time passes, discussing it gets easier. I still have to dig a little bit, past the shame and anger, to be able to form cohesive thoughts. I have to believe that I can dig even deeper, to access parts of myself that will allow for a little more gentleness and patience and something like joy.