Between wanting and believing
The prompt was "Conflicting feelings."
Cold water had beaded at the tip of my nose and fell into the sink at a steady tempo. I gripped the handles of the tap until my knuckles turned white. The thought of emptying my stomach into the toilet again made me want to repent.
I put my body through this trauma every weekend: a few bottles drained with some friends, some shameful fumbling in a stranger’s apartment, the shakiness of sobering up, and, finally, dragging myself to the back of the church on Sunday morning—the strains of a headache accompanying the groaning, creaking organ.
What did I know of God? And what did God think of me—a miserable sinner?
I had meandered from the bathroom to my bedroom and stood before my open closet. I reached out and plucked a tie from the rack. It reminded me of my old school uniform. Back then, God was mystical—magical, even. Ask and you shall receive1—like some sort of genie. At that age, grief hadn’t touched my life yet, and I was blissfully unaware of suffering. I could still recall Vacation Bible School and singing songs about what an awesome father-figure God was. I buttoned my collar and slung the tie around my neck.
In high school, Neil Campbell hanged himself. We weren’t close, but he lived a few doors down. People always wanted to know why when it came to suicide. There were two sides of the coin: either Neil didn’t want to live or he simply didn’t know how to live. The people at church whispered about it constantly. Some thought he was rotting in hell for his decision, while others imagined him sitting at the foot of God, finally at peace. The thought of Neil burning in hell cemented religion into me. I had to be good. I had to be saved. I had to rebuke myself of every evil, human thought or so help me, God would make me atone.
I knotted the tie and pulled it toward my neck. A bout of nausea bubbled up from my stomach. It was 10:28 AM. I had to move if I wanted to make the second service. I pulled a sweater over my head and looked at myself in the mirror one last time. I often wondered what the people I ended up with at the end of my alcohol-induced nights thought of me. What did they see when I stood in front of them—pale and unclothed? I always felt strange after a night with someone new. I could ignore the inner running dialogue and switch on a bit of charm when the occasion required. But there it was, the morning after—the anxiety. What did they think? Why did I do this? Sometimes, my own body repulsed me.
The first time I got drunk, I was twenty-one. I’d waited until I was of legal age. My childhood friend Serena held a green bottle of gas station wine to her lips and winked at me. We were in her college apartment, pre-gaming a house party. She started laughing—I don’t remember at what—and streams of liquid poured from the corners of her smile. It was disgusting, but I thought it was beautiful. She took my hand and put it on her cheek.
“You wouldn’t kiss me even if I asked you to,” she said softly. It burned like an accusation. I nodded.
“See? That isn’t even a real answer,” she laughed. “What are you so afraid of?” She hiccuped. “You’re my friend,” I said. My hand was still on her cheek. I pulled it away, but she grabbed it and placed it on her chest, right between her breasts.
“Exactly,” she nodded. She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, her lips wet with cheap wine. “That’s all,” she whispered, then stood up and left the room. I was hard and ashamed.
I turned away from the mirror and collected my keys from a dish on my dresser. My limbs felt heavy, my body urging me to stay home, to crawl back into bed. I thought about that one prayer from St. Augustine2: Oh God, make me good, but not yet. It touched a very specific part of me. I knew I couldn’t escape the emotional and spiritual bindings of religion—my conscience would never allow it—but I wasn’t ready to be a model Christian. I wasn’t even sure I really knew what that meant.
The first church my family attended had been divided after the head pastor’s affair. He abandoned his flock—and his wife and four children—for a woman he met on the internet. I hadn’t been old enough to fully grasp the drama of it all at the time, but as I got older, I started to understand that men of the cloth were just that: men. Human. Driven by either pleasure or the avoidance of pain. If a real “man of God” could so easily unravel the idea of a model Christian, what hope did I have of becoming one?
I walked the eight blocks to church with my head down. When I’d first moved to the city, I opened my Maps app and typed “churches near me.” At first, I just wanted the one closest in proximity, but when I saw it was a Catholic church, I balked. I’d been raised with the idea that Catholics were all ritual and no faith. “Creasters,” they called them: People who only showed up on Christmas and Easter. But the next closest church required a bus ride, so I figured I’d try this one.
What I decided I liked about the Catholic mass was that it didn’t involve anyone else in my faith—or my wavering lack thereof. I could just sit there and wait out my hangover while the priest mumbled prayers in Latin, never having to breathe a word to anyone else. When I was a teenager, I’d spent Wednesday nights at Youth Group, where the leaders always asked for prayer requests or for people to share what they were struggling with under the guise of “accountability.” It felt like putting myself on the stand. How could I admit, “Last night I masturbated, and now I want to kill myself, but I’m too afraid to burn in Hell” to a room full of people saying, “Please pray that I get an A on my Chemistry test, and that my grandma’s cold gets better”?
At least with the Catholic church, confession was private and optional. When I first started attending this church, I fantasized about confession. Not in the way that gets me off or anything, but rather in the humiliation ritual kind of way. I wondered what would come out of my mouth, sitting there, staring at the latticed wooden screen that separated me from the priest on the other side. Would I purge myself of all the things that made me feel guilty, or would I take the route of asking the priest all of these questions I wrestle with day in and day out, like, why do I have so much shame?
That shame drove me to think about giving up on this ritual often, but then my mother would call and ask how the church service had been. I couldn’t tell anymore if it was my fear of God or my fear of disappointing her that brought me back each week.
I entered the church with its high ceilings and the smell of old carpet and nodded at one of the greeters. My mother had been a greeter at her church. She loved that job. Now that she didn’t have kids at home anymore, I wondered if church had become more about not being alone than about cultivating faith. The last time I’d visited home, she swore loudly after closing her hand in the front door. I’d never heard her curse before.
I slid into the very last pew. Sweat collected on my collar as I peeled a hymnal from the seat pocket. Maybe she felt just like I did—like she had to keep showing up every Sunday because she wouldn’t know what else to do. Maybe she was afraid of Hell, or maybe she’d stopped believing in God years ago but didn’t want anyone to know. Maybe she was lukewarm3 too. The organ suddenly bellowed out and my breath caught in my throat as the chorus of sinners around me began their song. My lips parted, but nothing came out.